Inspired by American Mayonnaise, Trading Across Africa, Manufacturing and Trading across the Middle East.
Our story begins in West Africa, Liberia. The founders of AZ escaped the Lebanese civil war and started a small food store in Camp Johnson Road in 1960's in the capital Monrovia. From a store, AZ grew into a chain of supermarkets, that was followed by a wholesale distribution outlet which survived the Liberian civil war, and continues to serve as a huge distribution outlet into West Africa.
Through out the last fifty years, AZ and its partners had offices, factories, and distribution outlets in United Kingdom, Romania, Lebanon, Angola, Sierra Leone, Conakry, and Liberia. Liberia remains the longest standing and largest operation of the AZ group.
In Lebanon, AZ has a distribution outlet that imports food and non-food items under various brands particularly Food Love, and an export international offshore company that exports products all over the world.
Three items stand out in the trading business of AZ across the AZ group and their partners in the last fifty decades: mayonnaise, tomato paste and ketchup.
After decades of trading the American Blue Plate mayonnaise in West Africa, Founder Fawaz Merhi decided to invest in the first mayonnaise factory in Lebanon in 2011. Situation in Bekaa, thirty minutes from the Syrian border, the factory rests on 33,000 square meters of land, and capitalises on state of the art European technology with capacity to produce 18,000 jars of mayonnaise in one hour. Soon after the factory began production in 2012, it became ISO certified to ensure it competes with international standards for quality, hygiene, and food safety. AZ factory is also registered by the Food and Drug Administration in the USA and hope to export our products all over world, including US and Europe.
Between AZ distribution outlet in Liberia serving as a portal to Africa, and AZ factory in Bekaa situated thirty minutes from the Syrian border with promising prospects to penetrate Middle Eastern markets once the borders are open and safe, we are strategically located to be the number one factory in Africa and the Middle East.
