Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi-based food and beverage company Agthia plans to play an active role in Egypt and expand its business as the Egyptian government embarks on a new programme to attract foreign investment and grow its economy.

Chief executive officer of Agthia Group, Iqbal Hamzah told Gulf News that Egypt provides a lot of opportunities.

“The economic and political situation is improving [in Egypt] and the government is encouraging investments, particularly from the UAE. We as an Abu Dhabi-based company see an opportunity in the country,” Hamzah said.

Egypt conducted a major economic summit in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm Al Shaikh last week where hundred of companies from across the world took part and signed billions of dollars worth contracts in the field of energy, real estate and retail sectors.

UAE pledged $4 billion (Dh14 billion) support to the country and a number of UAE companies committed investment projects to develop the economy.

Hamzah said they are in the Business to Business (B2B) segment in Egypt at the moment and are planning to enter into the Business to Consumers (B2C) sector, and then expand.

“The category we are looking at it is to produce frozen vegetables and bottled water.”

The food and beverage company’s net profit increased 22 per cent from the previous year to Dh193.3 million in 2014. It has 13 products in its portfolio including fruit juices, energy drink and bottled water.

Talking about the growth plans of the company, Hamza said they are actively considering mergers and acquisitions in the coming days.

“Mergers and acquisition is going to drive the growth of the company. We are actively looking for targets and have some targets in mind. This is one of our key strategies for sustainable growth.” He did not reveal the time frame for mergers and acquisitions and said they are evaluating various options.

“Priority would be the UAE, GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, Egypt and Turkey. We are looking at various options either in the existing category of products or other adjacent products,” he said.

The company has four factories in the UAE and one factory each in Egypt and Turkey. Agthia Group has spent around a billion dirhams in expansion in the last eight years.

“Moving forward, we have [an] ambitious plan to maintain this growth momentum and accelerate it further. There are initiatives in place to achieve that.”

For 2015, the company has a strategy in place to increase sales and profits, reduce the cost of doing business and expand product portfolio and distribution network in the UAE.

It would be spending about Dh200 million in the expansion and maintenance in the next eight months and recruit more people, Hamzah said.

“We are expecting the number of people working for the company to go up this year by at least 100. At present 2,200 people work for the company.”

The company plans to increase the production capacity of Al Ain Water by putting a new water line with an investment of around Dh65 million by the third quarter of next year.

Talking about the health concerns in terms of sugar content in drinks, Hamzah said that they are looking into it.

“We are working on reducing sugar content or replacing sugar with natural sugar or fruit sugar. It’s a catch 22 situation for us. Some communities and nationalities prefer sweet like UAE nationals, but Europeans are more health conscious. It is difficult to cater to everyone so we have to come up with something balanced.”

He said there might soon be a regulation on sugar or salt content in drinks.