Moroccan tycoon Chakib Alj has taken control of Forafric Maroc's flour and pasta brands

Chakib Alj has completed his takeover of Forafric Maroc, ending a nine-month pursuit that survived a going concern warning, a court judgment against the target and a period in which the seller announced it was moving into drone technology.

Cap Holding, the industrial group Alj chairs, said the acquisition of a majority stake became effective on July 29. Neither party disclosed a price.

The transaction gives him the Tria and Maymouna brands, two of the best-known flour and pasta names in Morocco, alongside Cap Holding's existing Moony, Gato and Ifoulki labels. It also takes the group into pasta and couscous production for the first time.

Morocco consumes roughly 10 million tonnes of wheat a year, and the combination makes Alj one of the dominant figures in processing it.

The path there was unusually difficult.

Cap Holding notified Morocco's Competition Council in March of its intention to acquire 68% of Forafric Maroc's share capital and voting rights. The regulator cleared it in April. Alj had not waited for that clearance to begin operating the assets: in February he was already shipping grain into Forafric's plants at Meknes and Marrakesh to restart production ahead of Ramadan demand.

The deal then stalled. In May, the Casablanca commercial court ruled in favour of Crédit Agricole du Maroc against three companies inside the Forafric group, awarding the state-owned lender two judgments worth a combined $20.3 million, or 190.5 million dirhams, plus interest running from the date of claim. The larger of the two held Cerelis, the group's grain trading arm, jointly and severally liable alongside Forafric Maroc and Tria Group for $19.4 million.

The sale was revived in July after Alj, the seller and the bank reached an agreement, according to Africa Intelligence.

What he bought

Forafric Maroc is the Moroccan operating arm of Forafric Global PLC, a Nasdaq-listed agro-industrial company controlled by Yariv Elbaz, which has traded in New York since 2022 and holds operations across Burkina Faso, Mali and Angola.

Its condition explains the sale.

Revenue fell 45% in the six months to June 30, 2025, to $87.35 million, producing a net loss of $10.88 million. Financial debt stood at about $179 million. The company's auditors had issued a going concern warning the previous year, telling investors they had serious doubts about whether it could continue to exist.

The parent's response to losing its principal operating business drew attention. On April 23, three days after the Competition Council authorised the sale, Forafric Global announced it intended to pivot toward artificial intelligence, aerial drones, anti-drone laser applications and advanced defence technologies. A second release, which the Moroccan outlet Le Desk described as a correction, quickly replaced the first.

Where Alj started

He began in the same business he has now consolidated.

After studying in the United States, Alj returned to Morocco in 1987 to run Société Nouvelle des Moulins du Maghreb, a century-old milling company. He expanded it through Le Moulin de Berrechid, Moony, Matahine Bab Mansour and GSB.

Cap Holding grew outward from there. He founded Multisacs in plastics and packaging, Alf Mabrouk-Cicavi in poultry and animal feed, ACTL in transport and logistics, and Adiwatt Maroc in renewable energy. In 2022 the group took over Renault's distribution network in Morocco through M Automotive.

It now employs more than 3,500 people across milling, agri-food, poultry, plastics, tourism, distribution, civil engineering and renewables.

Alj has also spent his career inside the industry's representative bodies, chairing the National Federation of Milling, the Interprofessional Federation of Cereal Activities and the distribution federation TIJARA 2020. He was elected president of the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises in January 2020 and re-elected in May 2023.

That position gives the transaction an additional dimension. Morocco regulates the flour chain tightly, from wheat imports to subsidised bread, and Alj has been consolidating a sector the state controls while leading the body that represents Moroccan business to that state.

Cap Holding said the combination should produce industrial, commercial and logistical synergies through integrated production capacity, distribution networks and technical expertise, and that it expects the efficiencies to support job creation.