CAIRO • Egypt’s state-run Delta Sugar Co will invest about $131m to build a new refinery north of Cairo, a move toward self-sufficiency in the country, a senior company official said yesterday.

"We have received six different offers of land to build the new sugar beet refinery on and once we choose an offer, the refinery will be built in two years," Masoud Hamed, director of Delta sugar's financial administration department, said.

"The capacity of the new refinery, Delta 2, will be about 150,000 tonnes a year, and then another production line, which will cost about $70m, will be added.This should help us cover a great deal of the domestic market demand," he said.

Egypt produces around 1.5 million tonnes of sugar a year and consumes 2.4 million tonnes, the country's Ministry of Trade and Industry said.

In a statement on the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange website, the company said the new plant would bring the total production capacity of Delta Sugar up to 250 million tonnes of sugar a year.

Delta Sugar, Egypt's largest sugar beet producer, has an estimated output of 200,000 tonnes of white sugar and 100,000 tonnes of beet molasses and beet pulp a year.

The statement said that the company received an offer from the family of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late president of the United Arab Emirates to build the refinery in Sharqiya, north of Cairo.

Should Delta Sugar accept the offer from the Sheikh Zayed family, it will have enough capital to finance another project for a new factory, most likely in North Sinai, the company said.

"Most likely, Delta Sugar will choose the offer from the Sheikh Zayed family. They have been in discussions with them for a few months now," a source at the company said.

Egypt has recently adopted a new plan to become self-sufficient by shifting from sugar cane production to beets, which are easier to harvest and more economic.

Egyptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris said last month that he was in the process of establishing a sugar factory, that will come on stream in 2009, in the governorate of Alexandria on the north coast.

"The factory will help ease the sugar problem in the country...It is expected to have a production capacity similar to that of Delta Sugar Company," Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding the biggest telecommunications company in the Middle East, added.