The Egyptian government plans to transform Egypt into a global grain handling, processing, and storing hub. The first project toward this end has been identified as being at, and northeast of the port at Damietta. The project will include two 650-700 meter-long piers with a draft of 17 meters to accommodate larger ships, a 1,200 meter long river pier with a draft of 5-6 meters, and the construction of silos and domes with the capacity of 7.5 million tons of grain storage which will quadruple the capacity of Egypt’s ports from 2.5 million tons to 10 million tons. The facilities will be constructed with modern technologies that will allow for the internal trade rate of 16,000 tons per hour and will modernize methods of surveying, monitoring, freight movement, inspections, and customs clearance. There will be five additional investment and industrial zones for grain and food commodities. The first will be for the production of flour for domestic consumption and local export, the second for the production of soy production and the extraction of soy oil and pastures, the third for the production of corn oil, starch and fructose extraction, the fourth will be for the distilling and packaging of sugar, and the fifth will be for associated higher-value production based on the previous four zones such as the production of pasta, pastries, burgers, and other food industry products. The project is expected to increase the capacity of trade in grain and food commodities at Damietta from the current 7-8 million tons to 40 million tons, of which 12 million tons will be re-exported to local markets.
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