Egypt seeks to extract more flour from its wheat as battles soaring prices

(Reuters) -Egypt is looking at ways to extract more flour from its grain, a government minister said on Sunday, as the world's largest wheat buyer wrestles with soaring prices.

It was studying raising the flour extraction percentage used for subsidised bread to 87.5% from 82%, Supply Minister Aly Moselhy said at a news conference. Higher extraction rates leave the flour with more of the bran and germ while lower rates are the whiter flours from which these are progressively excluded.

Egypt plans to save around 500,000 tonnes of imported wheat, and to import 5-5.5 million tonnes of wheat for the 2022/23 fiscal year, he added.

The war in Ukraine has left Egypt, which provides steeply subsidised bread to more than 70 million people, facing sharply higher import costs. Russia and Ukraine have been the main suppliers of wheat to Egypt, one of the world's largest importers.

(Reporting by Sarah El Safty, Writing by Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Toby Chopra and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)