Wadi Group (Egyptian Arabic: وادى جروب) is a large Egyptian company that works in the agriculture and food industry. It is based in Giza, Egypt. The company is owned by a family and includes 12 different businesses. These businesses are involved in raising chickens, making animal feed, and processing food from plants and animals.
The Mazareh sector includes parts of the company that work with other businesses, such as Katkoot al Wadi and A'laf al Wadi, as well as brands that sell directly to customers, like Wadi Food and Wadi Farms. The Sina’at sector includes the company’s industrial businesses, such as Wadi Glass (now called Zugag), Tabreed, and other companies like Idafat, Asmida, and Tawseel.
Wadi Group is the largest company in Egypt and Africa that produces eggs. It has a flock of 10 million hens.
History
Wadi Group was founded in 1984 by a Lebanese family of poultry farmers. The company’s history began in 1957 when the eldest brother started working in the poultry industry in Lebanon. The Lebanese Civil War forced the family to leave the country and seek safety in nearby nations. Tony Freiji, who later created Wadi Group, moved to Egypt about 30 years ago.
In 2023, a Japanese company named Mitsui & Co. purchased a certain amount of ownership in Wadi Poultry, a company owned by Wadi Group. Wadi Poultry works in food production, processing chicken, and making animal feed. This investment, done with another Japanese company called Prifoods, plans to grow chicken farming operations from buying feed to selling products, focusing on Japan and other Asian countries.
In December 2024, Wadi Food, a company owned by Wadi Group, broke a Guinness World Record for the longest rotating chicken grill during its fifth Olive Harvest Festival. The grill was 62.8 meters long and could cook 390 chickens at the same time. The event, held at the company’s farm along the Cairo–Alexandria desert road, honored Wadi Food’s role in Egypt’s olive oil production and agriculture.
Business model
The company is still owned by a family. Two large Lebanese families, the Freijis and Nasrallahs, share responsibility for managing it. The company created a "family council" to help communicate between the business and more than 45 family members. This council is part of changes to how the company is managed, which were guided by the International Finance Corporation.
Although poultry is still the main part of the company's work, Wadi Group has expanded into other areas like making animal feed, transportation, producing olive oil, and growing fresh vegetables and fruits for sale abroad. In 2014, Wadi Group worked in seven different industries and had more than 3,500 employees. The company was active in Egypt and Sudan.
Subsidiaries
Wadi Food was the first company, and later it became part of the larger Wadi Group. It started with olive trees covering 30 hectares in an area about 85 kilometers south of Alexandria. By 2015, the company produced 10,000 metric tons of pickled olives and 1,000 metric tons of olive oil each year for sale in local and international markets. Over time, Wadi Food added more than 100 products, mostly in the organic food industry. The company sells its goods to countries such as the Gulf States, Canada, the United States, and Europe.
A company called Rula for Land Reclamation, which is part of Wadi Group, runs a marine fish farm in Egypt’s Western Desert, near Wadi El Natroun, about 80 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. This area was first developed for growing olives using groundwater. However, one well produced water with a saltiness of 26 grams per liter, much saltier than the mildly briny water needed for olive farming. This made the area unsuitable for traditional agriculture. To use this salty water, the company changed the site to create a fish farming operation in the desert.