Egyptian Frozen & IQF Export Report 2026

What this report covers

Egypt's frozen fruit and vegetable exports are usually discussed through supplier marketing rather than through what the country actually declared at its own customs. This report does the second thing. It sets out declared export value and declared net weight for the seven frozen HS codes Egypt reports meaningfully under, for 2023 to 2025, together with world rankings and destination markets.

Every table publishes the query that returns it, so any figure can be checked against the source in one click. Nothing here is modelled, estimated, or scaled.

There are no prices in this report. Public customs data supports value and volume; it does not support a price. Egyptian IQF pricing depends on grade, cut, caliber, packing, glaze, destination and Incoterm, and is issued against a specific enquiry rather than published. Value and weight are reported separately here and are deliberately not divided.

The seven categories, 2023 to 2025

Sorted by 2025 declared value. Two of the seven are residual baskets holding several products each — the products inside them cannot be separated at this level of the Harmonized System, and any source publishing a single-product figure for them is deriving it.

Source: World Bank WITS, redistributing UN Comtrade, retrieved 2026-08-25. Per-code queries: 0811.10 · 0710.80 · 0710.90 · 0811.90 · 0710.22 · 0710.21 · 0710.30

Egypt is not a large frozen strawberry exporter. It is the category.

In 2025 Egypt declared US$672.55 million of frozen strawberry exports against US$154.46 million for Poland, the next largest named country. That is not a lead — it is a different order of magnitude, and it holds on volume as well as value: 306,154 tonnes against Poland's 58,621 tonnes.

Egypt shipped more than the next four named exporters combined. For a buyer this changes the sourcing question. Frozen strawberry is not a category where Egypt is one option among several comparable origins; for volume programs it is the origin, and the practical question is which Egyptian route rather than which country.

The concentration is worth naming as a risk too. A category this dependent on a single origin is exposed to one country's crop year, one country's regulatory standing with the EU, and one country's logistics. Buyers running large programs should hold that in view even while sourcing here.

HS 0811.10, 2025. The European Union is reported in this dataset alongside its own member states, so its row overlaps them and is not a separate origin. Source query: WITS, all reporters.

2025 was a step change, not a trend line

Frozen strawberry exports had been growing steadily — US$335.83 million in 2023, US$381.27 million in 2024. Then 2025 came in at US$672.55 million. Volume moved the same way, from 163,847 tonnes to 191,388 tonnes to 306,154 tonnes.

A jump of that size in a single year is a capacity and crop story rather than a demand story, and it has a direct consequence for anyone buying in 2026: availability that was tight in earlier seasons was not tight in 2025. Buyers who negotiated on the assumption of scarcity were negotiating against a market that had just added roughly 115,000 tonnes of declared supply.

The vegetable side stopped growing — and that is the more useful signal

The frozen vegetable basket, HS 0710.80, tells the opposite story. Declared volume rose sharply from 97,222 tonnes in 2023 to 121,955 tonnes in 2024, then edged DOWN to 121,549 tonnes in 2025. Value was essentially flat across the same step, US$198.73 million to US$200.97 million.

Egypt ranks eighth in the world in this category, behind China, Belgium, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland. That is a genuinely competitive category rather than a dominated one, which means origin choice is a real decision here in a way it is not for strawberry.

For buyers of okra, artichoke, molokhia or peppers, the flat line is the operative fact: Egyptian capacity in these products is not expanding the way strawberry capacity is, so a growing program should be discussed against committed capacity rather than assumed.

HS 0710.80, 2024. The European Union is reported in this dataset alongside its own member states, so its row overlaps them and is not a separate origin. Source query: WITS, all reporters.

The fastest-growing category is the one nobody names

HS 0811.90 — the residual frozen fruit basket holding mango, pomegranate arils, grapes and guava — grew from US$23.63 million in 2023 to US$59.06 million in 2025. Volume more than doubled, from 9,396 tonnes to 19,946 tonnes.

It is the fastest-growing frozen category Egypt reports, and it is invisible in most coverage precisely because it has no code of its own. Nobody can publish a "frozen mango export" series, so the growth goes unremarked.

The caution is the same one that makes it invisible: the basket mixes several fruits with genuinely different processing economics, so a change in the total can reflect the mix shifting rather than any single fruit growing. Treat it as a signal that the category deserves attention, not as a measurement of any one product.

Fruit and vegetables go to different worlds

Egypt's frozen strawberry goes overwhelmingly to industrial processing markets: Germany, China, Poland, the Netherlands and Russia take the largest shares, with Brazil and the United States close behind. China as the second-largest destination is the notable entry — a trade lane that did not feature in this category a few years ago.

The vegetable basket goes somewhere else entirely. Saudi Arabia and the United States lead, followed by Italy and Spain, with Iraq, the UAE and Jordan all material. That is a Gulf-and-Mediterranean pattern reflecting dishes — okra and molokhia are staples in those cuisines — rather than an industrial-processing pattern.

The practical read for an exporter or a buyer: these are two different businesses sharing a cold store. Documentation expectations, packing formats and buyer types differ, and a route that is strong in one says little about the other.

HS 0811.10, 2025, top 12 destinations by declared value out of US$672.55m total. Weight is not broken out per destination — see method for why. Source query: WITS, Egypt exports by partner.

HS 0710.80, 2025, top 12 destinations by declared value out of US$200.97m total. Weight is not broken out per destination — see method for why. Source query: WITS, Egypt exports by partner.

What changed at the EU border in 2026

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/194 of 28 January 2026 added strawberries from Egypt to Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 — the list of goods subject to a temporary increase in official controls — for pesticide residues. It applies from 18 February 2026.

Two things matter for reading this correctly. Annex I entries are CN-code specific, and this one reaches the frozen form: the row lists CN 0810 10 00 and CN 0811 10 together, with an intended-use column reading "fresh, chilled or frozen", at a frequency of identity and physical checks of 20% of consignments. And a listing raises border checks; it does not change the product specification.

The operational consequence either way is clearance time. Listed consignments face identity and physical checks at the border, so documentation packs should be complete before departure and delivery schedules should absorb the additional handling. Whoever carries that cost and that risk should be settled in the contract, not discovered at the port.

Residue screening against EU maximum residue limits is the underlying issue. For EU-bound Egyptian strawberry it is worth treating a pre-shipment residue result as a condition of shipment rather than a formality.

Method, sources and limitations

Frequently asked questions