Cap Holding extends Chakib Alj's grip on Morocco's cereals trade

Cap Holding, the Moroccan group run by Chakib Alj, is extending its position in the country's cereals business beyond flour milling and into grain trading, Africa Intelligence reported on 14 September.

The publication says the group has quietly begun building a trading operation covering grain for both human food and animal feed, alongside its move to take over Forafric, one of Morocco's best-known milling companies. Alj, who heads Cap Holding, is also president of the Confederation generale des entreprises du Maroc (CGEM), the country's main employers' organisation.

A discreet move into trading

Africa Intelligence describes the trading build-out as deliberately low-profile, with the new activity aimed at both the food and the feed segments. No volumes, origins, counterparties or contract values were disclosed in the report.

The combination matters commercially. A miller that also trades controls its own raw material sourcing and can manage the spread between grain procurement and flour sales, rather than depending on third-party traders for timing and pricing. Morocco's milling and compound feed industries draw on both domestic harvests and imported grain, so a trading desk placed alongside milling assets changes where value is captured along the chain.

Feed grain adds a second demand pool with different quality specifications, typically thinner margins per tonne and larger volumes. Serving both segments from one book gives a trader flexibility over where cargoes are placed once they arrive, and a fallback outlet when flour demand softens.

Forafric's decade under Yariv Elbaz

Forafric was acquired ten years ago by Franco-Moroccan financier Yariv Elbaz. According to Africa Intelligence, a strategy of investing in all directions at once, combined with highly opaque management, pushed the group into what the publication calls worrying levels of debt, leaving it fighting for survival.

The miller is now described as on the brink of bankruptcy and set to be bought by one of its main competitors, Cap Holding. Africa Intelligence characterises the transaction as an ambitious one for Alj, who will have to settle the colossal debts of the Elbaz group. The report does not give a purchase price, a debt figure or a closing date.

The fallout extends beyond the mills. Another company controlled by Elbaz is trying to stay afloat while its sister company, previously its main customer, passes into the hands of a competitor, according to the same publication.

A sector in motion

For Morocco's grain chain, the practical effect of the Forafric deal is fewer independent millers of scale and a larger share of national milling capacity held by a group that also trades. The transaction lands in a processing sector where capital is already moving: Africa Intelligence separately reports that the parent company of Kayna, a popular pasta and couscous brand, opened its capital to investors in March and is now targeting a stock market listing, backed by leading names in the financial community.

Points to watch for operators and suppliers dealing with the Moroccan market:

• the terms on which Forafric's debt is settled, which will determine how much balance-sheet capacity Cap Holding retains for further purchases;
• whether the new trading arm buys directly from international origins or continues to work through established intermediaries;
• how competition authorities view the concentration of milling capacity in a single domestic group;
• the outcome of the Kayna listing plan, as a signal of investor appetite for Moroccan grain-based food assets.

Neither Cap Holding nor representatives of Forafric are quoted in the report, and no completion date for the takeover has been made public.