The Fight to Feed Egypt, and Where Poland Fits

Egypt is buying wheat from eight countries this winter. Poland, which sent a trade mission to Cairo in June and calls Egypt a priority market, is not one of them. Gazeta Finansowa put questions to eight Polish and international institutions and reviewed Turkish, Egyptian, Russian and Ukrainian reporting to establish why.
ISTANBUL – On Sept. 16 a committee of marine underwriters in London issued a bulletin, and the Black Sea changed shape. The Joint War Committee extended its high-risk zone to cover the whole of it, rather than the Russian and Ukrainian coastal strips it had listed until then, leaving Turkish, Bulgarian, Romanian and Georgian territorial waters outside the line. Cover for a seven-day voyage now runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Egypt, the largest wheat buyer on earth, bought French wheat the same day.
Grain still passes through the Bosporus past the ferry terminals and the tea gardens, bulk carriers riding high or low depending on where they have been. There is less of it than there was, it costs more, and it comes from fewer places. Russia, which used to move about 90 percent of its seaborne grain through Black Sea ports, is fitting out fertilizer and coal terminals at Ust-Luga, St Petersburg and Murmansk to handle wheat, the Turkish business daily Dünya reported on Sept. 22. Turkish exporters have drawn up a seven-point plan for a protected corridor run from Istanbul.
Somewhere in the files of a company owned by the Egyptian air force is the list of countries that will sell Egypt its bread this winter. Russia is on it, and Ukraine, France and the United States. A second list, of origins Cairo turned to as the sea closed, adds Romania, Bulgaria, Canada and Australia. Eight countries, three of them in the European Union.
Poland is on neither, and that is the sum of a year’s effort.
Mostakbal Misr, the agency that now buys Egypt’s bread wheat, intends to import 2.5 million tonnes by the end of March, from the four origins reported by the Egyptian outlet Ghad News on Sept. 24. Al Jazeera published the diversification list three days later.
„As far as I know, nothing sailed to Egypt from Poland yet”, Mirosław Marciniak, who runs the Warsaw grain analysis firm InfoGrain, told Gazeta Finansowa.
The most useful explanation came from KOWR, the Polish agricultural agency that organized the June mission. Negotiations in Arab countries are „a separate matter”, it said in written answers, considerably longer than elsewhere, and a contract typically follows only „after a dozen or more face-to-face contacts” between a Polish exporter and the importer. A dozen contacts means a dozen journeys – the flight, the hotel, the same courtesies, the same tea, the same questions asked again and answered again, over a year or two, before anyone signs anything.
By that measure, Cairo in June was meeting one.

“Hisham Suleiman, who runs the Egyptian grain trading company Mediterranean Star, told Al Jazeera that arrivals were still short of what rebuilding those reserves requires, and that the country would be buying through the end of the year”

Two suppliers, both disabled
Egypt relies on both domestic procurement and imports to supply its wheat market, including the subsidised-bread programme. National wheat imports run into many millions of tonnes annually. For three years it bought that volume from the Black Sea, where grain was cheap and the voyage took four or five days. This season both of its suppliers have been pushed out of the market by logistics rather than by any failure of the harvest.
Ukraine sent Egypt around 3.85 million tonnes last season. In July and August of this one it managed about 131,000 tonnes, according to figures Sergey Feofilov, director general of the Kyiv analysis house
UkrAgroConsult, provided to Gazeta Finansowa.
It is a question of freight. Shipping wheat from Odesa to Egypt costs $60 to $70 a tonne, against roughly $22 a year ago; on wheat worth a few hundred dollars a tonne the voyage has gone from an afterthought to a quarter of the price. Feofilov would not estimate the insurance component. His firm cannot separate the premium from the freight, and nobody in the trade is eager to publish the figure.
He attributes the collapse to „the current security and logistics situation rather than a structural change in Egyptian demand”, while noting that the longer Ukrainian supply stays constrained, the more time rival origins have to establish themselves. He also rejects the political reading of what has happened. „We do not see a strong political component behind this shift”, he told Gazeta Finansowa. Egyptian buyers respond to price, availability and logistics, and they buy from whoever delivers on the best terms.
Russia is in worse condition. Ukrainian drones came in over Novorossiysk on the night of Aug. 12 and stopped the two largest grain terminals in the country, owned by Demetra-Holding and United Grain Company, which between them move about a third of Russian grain exports. Two people were killed. A loading gallery was wrecked, the city lost its water supply, and the fires at the grain port and the naval base beside it were visible from orbit.
Arkady Zlochevsky, president of the Russian Grain Union, told the Moscow weekly Expert that exports for July through September may contract „at minimum twofold” against last year. Monitoring by the union’s analytical department, carried by Interfax, shows what that looks like on the quayside: in the middle of September, Russian grain was leaving from nine working ports, where a year earlier there had been 35, and reaching eight countries instead of 26.
All of which changed Cairo’s arithmetic, in a way that favours whoever can still deliver. Russian wheat was trading around $217 a tonne in early September, UkrAgroConsult reported, but freight to Egypt had reached $60, putting the landed price near $277. French wheat was $280 at the port, and selling. The discount that kept European grain out of Egypt for three years has been eaten by the cost of moving Russian grain out of damaged ports.
Supply Minister Sherif Farouk, announcing the 50,000-tonne French cargo, said Egypt held reserves of more than six months. Hisham Suleiman, who runs the Egyptian grain trading company Mediterranean Star, told Al Jazeera that arrivals were still short of what rebuilding those reserves requires, and that the country would be buying through the end of the year. He also named the figure that ought to interest a Baltic seller: cargo out of South America takes 25 to 28 days, against four or five from the Black Sea, and the voyage is in the price.
Gdańsk to Alexandria is a short haul and carries no war premium.

“As far as Egypt is concerned, we see great potential in this market. We are building relationships with banks there, and we take part in official economic missions to the country” Alicja Kaczmarek, Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, Press and relations office

Behind the curtain
Until late 2024, Egypt bought its wheat through the General Authority for Supply Commodities, which had held the job since the 1960 s and ran international tenders announced through the news agencies.
That system had one great virtue for a foreign seller: it was legible. A trading house in Gdańsk with no Egyptian history, no agent in Cairo and no friend in the Supply Ministry could read the tender in the morning, work out its freight by lunchtime, bid a price and win, because the comparison was conducted in public and settled on paper. The scale ran Egypt’s way too. As one of the world’s largest wheat importers, Cairo used the openness of the auction to buy under the world price.
That ended by presidential decision. Importing passed to Mostakbal Misr – Future of Egypt – a company affiliated with the air force, created by decree in 2022 to farm reclaimed desert, which now buys the wheat and hands it to the supply authority. The tenders stopped and the business moved into rooms, conducted through local importers. What had been a published auction became defence procurement, and the paperwork a stranger could read went with it.
For a newcomer the entry requirement changed with it. There is no document to read and no auction to enter, only a buyer to become known to.
In February, Ahmed Farghali, a member of parliament for Port Said, filed a briefing request. Egypt was paying about $270 a tonne for wheat, he wrote, against a world price nearer $240, and the difference came out of the budget that subsidizes bread for tens of millions of Egyptians. His complaint was about the design of the thing rather than anyone’s conduct: the old tenders had turned Egypt’s size into a discount, and he wanted to know where the discount had gone. The request went to the economic affairs committee, which is generally where such requests go.
Amr Adeeb had put the same questions to a national audience on MBC Masr the day before. Adeeb is the most-watched broadcaster in Egypt and no enemy of the government; he works as a licensed critic, free to go after prices, services and the competence of ministers while leaving the political order where it is. A file that reaches his studio has been permitted to become an argument. In Cairo this is understood, and it means the present arrangement is not necessarily the permanent one.
Farouk denied the overpricing. In the course of denying it he confirmed the detail any seller needs, which is that Egypt has been buying on payment terms of 270 days.
KOWR, for its part, reads the new system favourably, telling Gazeta Finansowa that direct dealing with Mostakbal Misr offers more flexibility on terms, faster contracting and a standing relationship with one of Egypt’s most important food buyers.
Diversification has moved faster in ministerial statements than in the cargo manifests. Mada Masr reported on Sept. 22 that Russia and Ukraine still accounted for 82 percent of Egyptian wheat imports, despite the Supply Ministry’s annual insistence on broadening origins. Bakeries outside the subsidy system are paying appreciably more for flour than they were in August.

“As far as I know, nothing sailed to Egypt from Poland yet” Mirosław Marciniak, Founder & Grain Market Analyst at InfoGrain

Poland’s year
The Polish delegation was in Cairo from June 22 to 25, organized by KOWR with the embassy and led on the government side by Deputy Agriculture Minister Małgorzata Gromadzka. Three agri-food companies travelled: two grain exporters and a maker of silos and farm machinery. KOWR named the exporters to Gazeta Finansowa as Elewarr, the government-owned trader, and the private firm Olewnik-Expo.
Elewarr’s president, Marcin Roszczyk, said on July 1 that „we are close to launching the first delivery to Egypt”. Asked in September where that delivery stood, the company’s board told Gazeta Finansowa that talks with Egyptian partners „are at a preliminary stage”. Olewnik-Expo did not respond to written questions.
KOWR’s own account of how markets open is the most candid thing any Polish institution has said about this. Removing market-access barriers falls outside its remit: that work belongs to the agriculture ministry, or to the European Commission negotiating on behalf of member states, and it can take years of sustained effort between capitals. KOWR’s contribution begins afterwards, and is designed „to help businesses and make it easier for them to start operating in a given market, not to replace that effort”.
Polish farm politics is less forgiving. Marcin Wroński of the union Samoobrona told cenyrolnicze.pl on Sept. 23 that Poland has not opened a significant new market in three years – the last was Venezuela, in August 2023 – and described the government’s record as „empty promises, propaganda videos on social media and unfulfilled commitments”. Gromadzka’s trip to Cairo, in his account, produced nothing visible, and he called the exercise diplomatic tourism to Egyptian resorts.

“The longer Ukrainian supplies remain constrained, the more time alternative origins have to strengthen their position in the Egyptian market” Sergey Feofilov, Director General of UkrAgroConsult

Poland’s silence in September also obscured real movement on the phytosanitary file, though nothing sufficient to load a ship. The agriculture ministry told farmer.pl on July 9 that Polish inspectors had met Egypt’s Central Plant Quarantine Administration about requirements for wheat, and that the Egyptian side had confirmed its willingness to operate a green corridor, under which Egyptian inspectors would check grain in a Polish port before loading. It was „too early at this stage”, the ministry said, to judge the scale of future exports.
Asked by Gazeta Finansowa in late September whether formal approval for milling wheat is now in force, and whether the corridor has been implemented, the ministry’s press officer, Dominika Pacholska, set out the framework for Polish grain exports and the government’s support for diversification without addressing either question. The plant protection inspectorate, GIORiN, referred the questions to the ministry.
Polish food exports to Egypt are growing briskly in everything except grain. Egypt’s annual wheat requirement is roughly twenty times everything Poland sells to the whole of Africa in a year – and Egypt was buying Polish wheat a decade ago, when African markets took nearly half of it.
But a cargo that cleared the paperwork would still have to be paid for, and Egypt’s search for alternatives to the dollar has not reached its grain.
Cairo has signed local-currency arrangements with Russia, China and India, but signing a framework and using it at scale are different matters, Mohamed Elchime, professor of political science at Capital University in Cairo, told Gazeta Finansowa. Price benchmarks, liquidity, hedging and convertibility all push grain settlement back into dollars.
So a first Polish cargo would be priced in dollars, insured in Warsaw, and paid against a letter of credit that a bank outside Egypt would have to confirm.
Both halves of the machinery that would pay for it exist, and both have been used on this market. KUKE covers commercial and political risk on Egyptian buyers and will insure contracts settled in currencies other than the dollar or euro, Marcin Jedliński, the agency’s spokesman and director of communications, told Gazeta Finansowa. He put Egypt in OECD risk category 5, where the classification published by European export credit agencies currently places it at 6, and declined to give exposure limits.
Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, the Polish development bank, confirms the letters of credit. „What matters to the exporter is that BGK takes the risk of non-settlement onto itself”, the bank said in written answers to Gazeta Finansowa. „The Polish exporter receives the funds once the conditions of the transaction are met, regardless of whether the foreign counterparty meets its obligations. In practice the bank bears the risk of the importer’s insolvency”.
It can also lend to the foreign buyer where a Polish firm holds the contract, an arrangement it calls „particularly attractive in developing countries, where BGK’s financing terms are often more favourable than what local banks offer”. Africa is the direction it calls most promising. „That is why in 2025 we raised the limit for financial support of exports and expansion in Africa to 4 billion zloty”, it said.
And on the market in question: „As far as Egypt is concerned, we see great potential in this market. We are building relationships with banks there, and we take part in official economic missions to the country”. The answers were sent by Alicja Kaczmarek of the bank’s press and external relations office.
It has done the work before. BGK confirmed two Egyptian letters of credit for Mine Master, a Lower Silesian maker of mining machinery – €7.3 million, then €18.7 million in November 2024, its largest confirmation under the government export programme, carrying a full KUKE guarantee. „By confirming the letter of credit for Mine Master, our bank assumed the risk of non-payment by the importer”, Karol Rozenberg, BGK’s senior expert for trade finance relations, said at the time.
Which leaves a narrower question than the one this report began with. The instruments exist, the appetite exists, and a Polish bank has already stood behind Egyptian paper. What BGK did not address, asked directly, was whether it would confirm a letter of credit for a wheat cargo on the terms Egypt is offering. Mining machinery is a capital good sold once to a named buyer. Bread wheat is a commodity bought in bulk on 270-day payment terms by an agency owned by the air force.

“By confirming the letter of credit for Mine Master, our bank assumed the risk of non-payment by the importer” Karol Rozenberg, Senior Expert for Trade Finance Relations, BGK

There is also the question of which Egyptian bank issues the paper. BGK built its Egyptian correspondent relationships through agreements signed in 2018 with the Export Development Bank of Egypt and with Banque Misr. In August the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed a special measure under the Patriot Act against Banque Misr’s operations in the United Arab Emirates, one of the channels through which Egyptian trade reaches dollar clearing. Correspondent banks treat filings of that kind as a reason to reduce exposure.
None of that makes the case hopeless. Poland has the materials for one. Short-haul freight that carries no war premium while the Black Sea stays expensive and the Americas stay distant, an export credit agency willing to cover the buyer, a procurement system in Cairo that pays for relationships, and a customer shopping in the open.
What it lacks is partly paperwork – approval confirmed between governments, a green corridor moved from willingness to operation, a bank prepared to confirm nine-month paper – and partly knowledge. The buyer is a military company that publishes neither its prices nor its counterparties, in a trade that two years ago was conducted by public auction, and markets like that reward residence rather than visits.
The window is being worked on from the other end as well. The corridor the Turkish exporters have proposed would put protected zones around the grain terminals, underwrite the war-risk cover and run the traffic from Istanbul. Build something like it and the underwriters redraw the map again, the freight comes down, and the advantage that makes Polish wheat competitive in Alexandria is gone.
„The longer Ukrainian supplies remain constrained, the more time alternative origins have to strengthen their position in the Egyptian market”, Feofilov said.

Marcin Wroński of the union Samoobrona told cenyrolnicze.pl on Sept. 23 that Poland has not opened a significant new market in three years – the last was Venezuela, in August 2023 – and described the government’s record as “empty promises, propaganda videos on social media and unfulfilled commitments

HOW THIS REPORT WAS PREPARED
Gazeta Finansowa submitted written questions to KOWR, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the GIORiN plant protection inspectorate, Elewarr, Olewnik-Expo, the export credit agency KUKE and the development bank Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, and to Afreximbank in Cairo. KOWR, the ministry, KUKE, Elewarr and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego responded. Olewnik-Expo and Afreximbank did not. Interviews were conducted with analysts in Warsaw, Kyiv and Cairo. Turkish, Egyptian, Russian and Polish reporting is cited where it is the source of a figure.
Jacob Wirtschafter reports from Istanbul and covers international political economy for Gazeta Finansowa. He lived in Cairo from 2014 to 2022.