Egypt’s frozen produce exports to EU skyrocket

According to EastFruit, Egypt has become the top exporter of frozen vegetables, fruits and berries to the EU market in 2022, surpassing its competitors in both quantity and quality. Egypt has also achieved a remarkable feat of exporting more frozen products to the EU from January to September 2023 than in the whole of 2022, making it one of only two countries to do so.

Strawberries remain the key category of Egyptian frozen produce exports to the EU, annually providing from 75% to 80% of all supplies in the volume terms. In 2018-2022, EU countries more than doubled their imports of frozen strawberries from Egypt. Similar growth rates were observed in the other segments of frozen fruits and vegetables. In addition to strawberries, Egypt delivers frozen artichokes, green beans, various other vegetables, and vegetable mixes to EU countries.

It is worth noting that Egypt keeps the primacy in the two main segments of its exports to the EU. Thus, Egypt remains the leading exporter of frozen strawberries to the EU market since 2019, while before that the status of the leader had belonged to Morocco. Since then, exports of Moroccan frozen strawberries have remained stagnant at around 56-64 thousand tons, while Egypt on average boosted supplies annually by 21%.

In the ranking of exporters of frozen artichokes to the EU, the advantage of Egypt remains even more overwhelming. Egyptian suppliers provide about 90% of all imports of frozen artichokes in EU countries (excluding EU intra-trade). For comparison, in 2022, the EU imported 20 thousand tons of frozen artichokes from Egypt, while exports from Peru (second-largest supplier) totaled only 1.6 thousand tons.