The American market is closing up, sardine catches have disappointed, and the Aïn Ifrane plant is slowly resuming operations. It is against this backdrop that the group founded by Adil Douiri is releasing its first figures for 2026. Consolidated first-quarter revenue comes in at 423 million dirhams, down 6% year-on-year. The group puts forward cyclical explanations, and it is right to do so. But behind these explanations, two stories can be read which, taken together, raise a broader question about the group’s trajectory.
The American weak link
The first story is that of Season. The American sardine canning brand, acquired in 2021 to establish a foothold in the North American market, accounts for 26% of the group’s annual revenue. This quarter, its volumes fell by 33%. The reason given by the group is simple: the absence of promotional activity at Costco, the American wholesale giant whose promotional operations constitute a major commercial lever for the brands it distributes. One promo campaign missed, and a third of Season’s volumes evaporate.
That is where the real fragility of the model lies. Season made good progress in 2025: volumes up 8%, dollar revenue up 10%, and an entry into Sam’s Club, Costco’s direct rival owned by the Walmart group, which was meant precisely to diversify distribution channels. But the first quarter of 2026 is a reminder that dependence on the promotional calendar of one or two retailers remains structural. The entry into Sam’s Club has not yet produced the buffer effect that had been hoped for.
Added to this is an American context that is becoming more complicated. The group itself notes this, anticipating a slight decline in margins at Season, partly due to the lag in passing through higher purchase prices and customs duties. American trade policy, which has tightened import conditions on several categories of food products, is beginning to weigh on the subsidiary’s margins. Mutandis does not quantify this impact, but flags it, which is enough to indicate that it is not negligible.
Aïn Ifrane, the catch-up
The second story of the quarter is more cheerful. The beverages business posted growth of 90% over the quarter, with volumes up 168%. These figures are first and foremost mechanical: they are explained by the gradual return to normal at the Aïn Ifrane mineral water plant, whose production had been completely halted in the first quarter of 2025 following an industrial breakdown at the end of 2024. In other words, a quarter of recovery is being compared to a quarter of complete shutdown. The basis for comparison is flattering by construction.
The real question for 2026 lies elsewhere: will the installation of a new production line in the first quarter allow Aïn Ifrane to return to normative volumes over the full year? That is what the group is anticipating, without specifying a figure.
In 2025, the breakdown had been costly: beverage volumes had fallen by 21% over the year, and category revenue had dropped to 258 million dirhams compared with 335 million in 2024, a decline of 23%. The bar to clear is therefore not very high, but the commercial context for beverages complicates the picture. The Moroccan market for fruit-based beverages is in decline, penalized by competition from sodas and unfavorable weather this quarter. Aïn Ifrane can recover its industrial capacity without that being enough to revive the category.
Hygiene, for its part, is down 5%. Volumes are stable, but the product mix is shifting: Moroccan consumers are switching from powder detergent to liquid detergent, which is cheaper per kilogram. The new unit dedicated to liquid detergents installed in 2025 allows Distra, the group’s hygiene subsidiary, to support this trend, but at the cost of a slightly compressed revenue figure. This is not bad news in substance; it is a successful industrial adaptation to a change in consumer behavior.
The second leg
What these first three months of 2026 highlight is the group’s risk structure. Mutandis has built a coherent model around four complementary divisions: hygiene, seafood products, beverages, and Season. But two of these four divisions concentrate the major uncertainties of the current financial year.
Season depends on an American market whose rules of the game are changing, on a fishery resource whose availability is structurally constrained, and on a promotional calendar that amplifies quarterly volatility. Seafood products in Morocco, for their part, had suffered in 2025 a very marked decline in the availability of fresh sardines, in the terms of the group’s annual report, which had not made it possible to return to normative production volumes.
A new sardine hydrolysates plant has just been completed in Dakhla, the first in Africa in this segment according to the group, to transform co-products into high value-added powder intended for export. It is an ambitious industrial bet on moving upmarket, with initial revenues having started this quarter, but with the ramp-up still to be demonstrated.
Mutandis has 12 industrial sites, 3,778 employees, exports to more than 45 countries, and posted a recurring net profit of 140 million dirhams in 2025, up 10% despite a difficult year. The underlying solidity is not in question. But the group is reaching a moment when its most obvious growth drivers are facing simultaneous headwinds. The group’s forecasts promise revenue growth, driven by the return to normal at Aïn Ifrane and the ramp-up of the hydrolysates plant.
That may perhaps be enough for the year. Over the medium term, the avenues exist: the Dakhla hydrolysates plant opens up a high value-added segment, Season continues to diversify its channels in the United States. The trajectory is taking shape, even if it remains to be confirmed in the coming quarters.
Written in French by Safae Hadri, edited in English by Eric Nielson
