Machine failure halted largest sugar plant in Ethiopia

By Groum Abate

Capital

Metahara Sugar Factory, the biggest of three producers, has been facing a considerable decrease in production after a crushing machine failed.
Sources told Capital the factory lowered its production of 7,000 quintals per day to 2,000 quintals per day after the problem occurred.

A public relations officer from Metahara Sugar Factory told Capital the problem has now been solved, though he declined to clarify the nature of the failure.
According to our sources, experts from Wonji Sugar factory had tried to fix the sugar cane crushing machine, but were not successful.

Metahara has a capacity of producing more than 1.2 million quintals of sugar annually. The other two sugar factories in the country -Wonji and Finchaa- have a capacity of producing each about 850,000 quintals of sugar annually.

According to our sources, sugar prices on the market are expected to rise due to the failure of the machine as last week saw the spike in the price per quintal from around 800 birr to 1,100 birr at a tender opening on Thursday, January 8, 2009. The bid opened at the Ethiopian Sugar Development Agency (ESDA) shows a staggering hike in the opening climbing the 1,000 birr mark for the first time in recent years.

Refuting these, the public relations officer at Metahara, said that Ethiopia annually consumes over four million quintals of sugar and the factories in the country could not meet the demands, leading the prices to rise. He further said that the current price hike is not associated in any way with the machine failure that decreased production at Metahara.

In a related development, the ESDA announced on Thursday, January 8, 2009, plans to buy 169 million dollars worth of sugar to tackle the current sugar shortage in the country.
The agency said that over 150,000 tonnes of sugar are expected to be imported in the coming three months from India and Egypt.
The decision to import this huge amount of sugar was made following the ever increasing demand by the local community.

Metahara Sugar Factory is an autonomous state owned agro industrial complex, which was established in 1968 with an initial crushing capacity of 1,700 tons of sugar cane per day.
The factory is now operating with an annual sugar production of 120,000 tons within a production period of 246 days.

Metahara located 200km south east of Addis Ababa, on the Addis-Dire Dawa road, produces white sugar, molasses and various types of fruits. About 3,000 tons of various kinds of fruits are marketed annually.

Metahara’s sugar is supplied to domestic and foreign markets. About 65% of the annual sales volume goes to domestic market while the remaining is exported.
The state-owned ESDA recently planned to boost sugar production by upgrading existing factories, building new plants and developing land and water resources.
The plan aims to increase sugar production at Metahara Factory to 350,000 tonnes annually from 120,000 tonnes. Wonji/Shoa plans to boost output to 120,000 tonnes a year from 85,000 tonnes by 2011. The Finchaa factory is expected to boost production to 270,000 tonnes a year from 85,000 tonnes by 2011.

The government is also building the 100-million- dollar Tendaho Sugar Factory with a production capacity of 600,000 tons a year in lower Awash Valley.

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