Growing Industrial Ecosystem

Automotive: from assembly to export powerhouse

Morocco's automotive exports reached a record MAD 157 billion ($17 billion) in 2024, up 6.3% on 2023. Renault Group's factories — Mellousa near Tangier and Somaca in Casablanca — led the volume, with Renault's own exports growing 8% and 76% of that volume departing via Tanger Med bound for Europe.

Stellantis operates a second major plant in Kenitra and has announced plans to double production capacity there in the coming years. Together, the two manufacturers have made Morocco the European Union's top non-EU vehicle supplier, with export revenue now above pre-pandemic levels.

Aerospace: a slower build, a real one

Morocco's aerospace exports hit MAD 26.4 billion in 2024, and continued climbing — up 8.9% year-on-year to MAD 14.13 billion in the first half of 2025 alone. Safran arrived in 1999 and has since expanded across multiple Moroccan facilities; Boeing has operated in the country since 2001, including a joint venture with Safran in Casablanca building wire harnesses and other components for both Boeing and Airbus aircraft.

The industry runs across dedicated economic free zones in Tangier, Kenitra, Oujda and Salé — a deliberate cluster strategy rather than scattered single-site investment.

OCP and the phosphate base

Morocco holds roughly 70% of the world's known phosphate reserves, and OCP Group — the state-linked operator — controls a comparable share of reserves while holding approximately 31% of the global phosphate product market. OCP is listed among the world's major global chemical companies, a scale marker for a business built on a domestic resource.

That reserve base underpins two forward-looking ambitions covered elsewhere in this knowledge center: phosphate-based agritech (fertilizer supply for African agriculture) and an emerging role in global battery and critical-minerals supply chains, given phosphate's relevance to LFP battery chemistry.

Market Outlook

Automotive and aerospace export growth should continue as Stellantis's capacity expansion and Safran's footprint growth play out, though both remain tied to European end-market demand. OCP's phosphate base gives Morocco a genuinely uncorrelated third pillar, with battery-supply-chain and African fertilizer-export ambitions as the medium-term expansion story to watch.

“Automotive and aerospace get pitched as diversification. They're not fully independent — both are EU-demand-linked, so a European downturn hits both at once. The genuine diversification is phosphates, which trades on a different cycle entirely.”

— WE ARE TOGETHER Research Desk

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