State orders release of sugar inventory seized at Edita’s Beni Suef candy facility

Cairo, 26 October 2016

Edita Food Industries S.A.E. (EFID.CA on the Egyptian Exchange and EFIDq.L on the London Stock Exchange), a leader in the Egyptian packaged snack food market, received today notification from the Prosecutor General’s Office that it had ordered the release of the company’s sugar inventory seized last week at an Edita facility.

On 22 October 2016, government officials seized c. 2,000 tons of sugar at the company’s confectionery plant in Beni Suef. The seized inventory represented approximately three weeks’ raw material input for the company’s production lines. The order by a government inspection committee resulted in a temporary halt of the Beni Suef plant’s operations pending resolution of the situation.

Commenting on the Prosecutor General’s order, Edita Chairman and Managing Director Eng. Hani Berzi said: “Edita is a company that has grown and thrived through an iron-clad commitment to abiding the law and to excellence in governance at all levels of our organization. We have demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Prosecutor General’s Office that our stocks of sugar in Beni Suef were lawfully obtained and were held at a level commensurate with our standard inventory holdings and pace of operations. This inventory was acquired at market prices from the private sector.

“We are grateful for the personal attention paid to our issue by a number of senior government officials, who clearly understand the definition of private property and of a free market economy.

“We are now resuming production at our Beni Suef plant; all 5,500 of our Egyptian staff at our four plants nationwide look forward to being an engine of economic growth not just in these admittedly challenging times, but as the macro backdrop improves in the years ahead,” Berzi concluded.

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