Mohammed Makes Major Investment in Addis Ababa's Food Security

Horizon Plantations, a subsidiary of MIDROC Ethiopia Group, has allocated 800m Ethiopian Birr (approximately US$28m) to the construction of a flour and bakery plant in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Addis Ababa’s City Administration initiated the project. Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, as Chairperson of MIDROC Ethiopia, was highly supportive of the idea and committed to invest in it.

The plant is expected to bake 80,000 loaves of bread an hour. 100g of bread is planned to retail at 75 cents, a significant cut from the current price of two Birr. The private public partnership project is intended to help alleviate the shortage of bread in the fast-growing city and stabilise its price.

In a related development, MIDROC Ethiopia Technology Group’s Lame Dairy announced plans to double capacity at its Gurd Shola plant. Addis Ababa was recently hit by a shortage of milk and high prices. The doubling of capacity, the continuing supply of high quality feed to smallholder farms and possible investment in its own dairy farm will help the dairy to alleviate such problems.

Update – June 25th, 2020

The Sheger Bread Factory (as the Horizon Plantations investment was named) has now been officially opened by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed. The bakery has the capacity to produce around two million loaves of bread in three shifts every working day and can reduce the price of bread by over half in a rapidly growing city. The final cost was $26.4m and the project took ten months to complete from start to finish. The factory will also create 3,400 jobs in Addis Ababa in production and distribution.