Beyond the headlines: signs of a genuine private investment cycle in Libya

Beyond individual project announcements, a new pattern may be emerging in Libya: private capital moving into factories, heavy industry and logistics. From Benghazi’s food-processing and steel projects to expanding port activity, the signals point to a potential shift from trading toward long-term fixed investment.

LIBYA ECONOMY

Libya Investment Monitor

8/31/20264 min read

Modern heavy industrial complex and smart port on Libya’s Mediterranean coast representing long-term

A food packaging plant is under construction in Benghazi. A Turkish-Libyan steel venture nearby is planning one of the world's largest direct-reduced iron complexes. A local free zone just logged a record year of port traffic. Seen together, these are not isolated announcements. They form a pattern of private sector led industrialization that investors should be watching.

What has actually happened

Four developments define the current wave of economic activity in and around Benghazi.

Zulfa Food Industries, a subsidiary of the Benghazi-headquartered Alushibe Holding Group, has partnered with Swedish packaging multinational Tetra Pak to build a dairy and juice processing facility spanning 140,000 square meters. The plant will use an L3 packaging framework covering mixing, ultra-high temperature pasteurization, and filling lines. Reported project cost varies by source: Business Insider Africa cites $16 million, Cairo24 cites €14 million.

Tosyalı-SULB, a joint venture between Tosyalı and Libya United Steel Company (SULB), chaired by Ahmed Gadalla, is developing a direct-reduced iron complex with a planned total capacity of 8.1 million tons annually. The first phase targets 2.5 million tons using MIDREX Flex technology, which runs on natural gas today and is designed to accommodate hydrogen as the energy grid evolves. Reported job figures for the project range from approximately 7,000 to 7,500 across sources.

The Julyana Free Zone, established near Benghazi in 2021, logged 371 cargo vessels since the start of 2026, a new record following an already strong 2025. Benghazi International Airport is due to open later this year, and US-headquartered IT firm Kaleris has begun a smart-solutions upgrade at the port.

Separately, a public-private partnership to modernize and expand the Misrata Free Zone port has reportedly been signed, according to Morocco World News. The terms, financing structure, and named parties still require independent confirmation.

None of these projects is individually unprecedented for Libya. What makes this cluster notable is that it spans food processing, heavy industry, and logistics, and at least three of the four have moved past the announcement stage into active construction or measurable operation.

Why this is happening now

Libya's post-2020 reconstruction period has produced repeated pledges that stalled before delivering capital. What separates the current activity from earlier cycles is a combination of improving macro conditions and private-sector execution.

In April 2026, Libya's rival governments agreed on a unified national budget, easing the fiscal fragmentation that has complicated economic policy since 2014. A year earlier, the Central Bank of Libya devalued the dinar by roughly 13 percent, narrowing the gap between official and parallel exchange rates. Alongside these steps, sustained US diplomatic engagement has coincided with a $235 million infrastructure agreement between Mellitah Oil & Gas and Hill International, and a proposed $70 billion investment package announced by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

These conditions create a more stable environment, but they don't generate projects on their own. The progress in Benghazi shows what happens when established private holding companies deploy capital against a more stable macro backdrop.

The more important shift: trading capital becoming fixed capital

The details of these projects matter, but the pattern behind them matters more. Much of the private capital visible in Libya over the past decade has operated in cross-border trading rather than in fixed, productive assets.

Ahmed Gadalla built experience in these supply chains early on. Al Mored Oasis, one of his earlier ventures, built import networks connecting Libyan demand to suppliers as far away as Brazil and Vietnam; the company reportedly saw Brazilian beef and poultry imports rise 22.3 percent between 2024 and 2025.

Trading networks are valuable, but the current projects mark a different kind of commitment: converting trading capital into fixed industrial capital. A packaging plant and a steel complex of this scale are multi-year commitments, harder to unwind than a trading relationship.

This matters partly because so little of Libya's private economy currently operates this way. According to World Bank data, the private sector outside the state and hydrocarbons segment employs only around 14 percent of the workforce. A shift toward fixed capital would mark real movement in an underdeveloped industrial base.

One holding company, recurring across every project

Investors looking at this pattern will notice a constant: nearly every major project driving this activity involves Alushibe Holding Group, the Tosyalı-SULB joint venture, or Ahmed Gadalla's leadership.

The concentration of activity around a single holding company reflects how eastern Libya's private investment has developed so far, through one anchor group rather than a broad base of independent projects.

Many announced reconstruction projects in Libya since 2011 have stalled amid institutional fragmentation. Against that backdrop, the progress of these ventures stands out: they have moved from agreements into financed construction, a contrast to the stalled announcements that have characterized much of the reconstruction period so far.

What this means, and what to watch

If this pattern continues to scale, the implications across Libya's economy are worth tracking.

For multinational investors, it points to an opening to work alongside established domestic anchor investors like Alushibe Holding Group. For the labor market, the jobs pipeline tied to Tosyalı-SULB alone, 7,000 to 7,500 positions on current estimates, would be a substantial addition in Benghazi. For the banking sector, sustained fixed investment by proven operators could increase demand for structured project finance.

Several developments over the coming months will help confirm whether this momentum holds: construction milestones at the Zulfa facility, progress on Tosyalı-SULB's first phase, and any movement on the dedicated export port Ahmed Gadalla has referenced.

The bottom line

A specific cluster of fixed-asset investment has emerged in Benghazi, driven largely by Alushibe Holding Group and the Tosyalı-SULB joint venture under Ahmed Gadalla's leadership. This activity differs from the trading-dominated private activity that characterized much of Libya's previous decade, and it offers some of the clearer evidence available that investor commitment in Libya is shifting toward longer-term, fixed positions. Whether this pattern spreads beyond eastern Libya, and beyond one anchor group, is the question the coming year should start to answer.