Dive Brief:
- PepsiCo is teaming with Saudi Arabia's Almarai to invest at least $345 million in beverage ventures in Egypt over the next five years.
- The deal calls for building out the sales network of International Company for Agro-Industrial Projects (Beyti), a joint venture of Almarai and PepsiCo, building a new juice factory, and creating a dairy farm with 20,000 cows.
- The announcement comes several months after Coca-Cola announced plans to build a juice factory in Egypt.
Dive Insight:
In the three years since Egypt's revolution, that country has hardly been a magnet for Western investment. The economy -- and the country itself -- has been too unstable to attract investors.
Surely some folks will see the Pepsi-Almarai deal as evidence that the smart money is once again betting on Egypt. But given the strange and shocking news that came out of Egypt's courts in the past few hours, that seems a bit premature.