Global Perspectives—Printing Industries in Egypt

Egypt, with its 110 million population, has one of the largest printing and packaging markets in the region and continent.

In addition, Egypt has a long history with printing, dating back to 1798 when Napoleon brought with him three relief printing presses on his ships and started—even before arriving in Egypt, while his troops were sailing in the Mediterranean Sea—to print all the documents needed for his army and for communicating with the Egyptian people.

First Printing House

Napoleon took his presses with him when he left in 1801. About 20 years later, in 1820 (204 years ago), Mohamed Ali Pasha, Governor (Wali) of Egypt, started to build Egypt's first printing company, Al Amiria Press, which is still working till today, occupying 35,000 sq. m, with nearly 3,000 employees, consuming 20,000 tons of paper, with a capacity of 750,000 B1 sheets printed on both sides on 54 different printing presses per day.

The first newspaper in Egypt and the Middle East, named El Wakae El Masreya , was printed in 1928 headed by its editor Sheikh Mohamed Abdo.

The Federation of Egyptian Industries, first established in 1922, has a special Chamber of Printing & Packaging which was founded in 1969 with 4,415 packaging printers and 2,687 commercial printers as members.

Egyptian Printing & Packaging Industries in Numbers

The Egyptian printing industry is dominated by sheetfed litho offset printing with a market share of approximately 60%, followed by flexo printing with approximately 20% market share. Gravure and screen printing together share about 12% of the market, while digital printing is about 8%.

Egypt has two main uncoated paper mills: Kena with an annual capacity of 120,000 tons and Edfu with 60,000 tons, representing only about 35% of the total consumption. Everything else is imported.

The total amount of litho offset ink consumed annually is about 8,000 tons, where sheetfed ink consumption is about 5,000 tons.

The digital printing market size page count comprises:

• 700 million color pages per year.


• 5 billion statements and invoices, and around 1.5 billion black and white pages per year.

In addition, an average of 10 million sq. m of large-format inkjet billboards are printed every year, and in election years this number is estimated to be much more, with some people predicting that it can reach as much as 11 to 13 million sq. m.

Packaging is the fastest growing market in Egypt with an annual growth of 20%.

Print Education

The first print educational program was introduced 185 years ago when Mohamed Ali Pasha established the Faculty of Applied Arts to serve the Egyptian army at that time, later in 1975 joined Helwan University. Today in its Printing Publishing & Packaging Department, there are more than 330 undergraduate students and more than 42 post-graduate students preparing for their MA, MSc, and PhD degrees.

Also, Egypt is one of the very few countries that has special vocational printing schools, secondary printing schools, higher institutions, and government and private universities, all teaching printing and packaging technologies.