Fish is an important food source in Egypt, accounting for 25.3% of the average household’s protein intake and a fish consumption of 23.5 kg/person/year. The aquaculture sector in Egypt is contributing approximately 80% of the over 2 mln tons of total fish consumption. Capture fisheries and limited imports contribute the other roughly 400 ktons. The aquafeed production in Egypt amounts in 2020 between 1.5 and 2 mln tons but the required feed ingredients for this production are generally imported. Local crops are largely destined for human consumption rather than animal feed. There are several promising options to generate high(er) quality nutritional aquafeed ingredients to a big extent derived from presently not or not appropriately utilized waste streams.
Considering the size of the poultry industry (over 1.7 bln broiler birds), the associated potential to render by-products (over 250 ktons sellable poultry by-products with a market value of over well 100 mln US$) and Egypt being the no. 8 global aquaculture producing country and globally 3rd tilapia producer obviously opportunities will arise in the rendering industry for feed ingredient supply. Poultry-by-products meal (PBM) produced in Egypt today are generally of substandard quality due to lack of hygiene, inappropriate collection practices and processing methods which all can be improved. Poultry-by-product meals (also including poultry blood and feather meal) of good quality could contribute approximately 16% of the tilapia feed ingredient requirement in volume and 34% of the required protein for the annual 1.5 mln tons tilapia feed that is consumed in Egypt today. This would greatly reduce the import of raw materials and reduce feed cost. In order to achieve this volume and the desired quality it will be necessary to abandon wet poultry markets as they are today, centralize slaughterhouses and rendering and develop cold chains to distribute poultry meat (legs, breast, etc.) throughout Egypt.
Insect protein production is presently not officially authorized in Egypt neither is insect protein (or oil) a registered feed ingredient. Thus, from the regulatory point of view some steps need to be taken before considering producing insects at industrial scale in Egypt. Proteinea is a startup insect company in that is eyeing a first scale-up to produce 1 ton of live insect larvae per day to produce approximately 2 ktons insect protein meal and 0.8 ktons oil from agriculture waste streams. The economics look promising, but a proof of concept is lacking till now. Phase 2 and 3 of the Proteinea project could deliver 0.06% and 0.3% respectively of the protein needed for the Tilapia feed requirement in Egypt.
Brewery-by-products such as spent yeast and grain (dried distillers grains) are already applied in aquafeed in other parts of the world but not in Egypt yet. Al Ahram Breweries (part of Heineken Group) has 2 waste stream that may be upgraded by drying them to supply the aquafeed industry. Surplus yeast processing could render approximately 500 tons brewer’s yeast and drying of spent brewery grains would give 3-4 ktons dried distiller’s grains. The volumes of dried yeast and spent grain are relatively small (≈0.04% and ≈0.33% of the tilapia feed protein requirement) but as such would contribute to the circularity of the Egyptian aquaculture industry.