Enterprise to build export standard Slaughter house

By AAU School of Journalism and Communication graduate school students  
 

Addis Ababa Abattoirs Enterprise (AAAE), which is owned and operated by the Addis Ababa City Administration, is set to build a state of the art export standard abattoir in the outskirt of the city, Furi Hana locality, with an investment outlay of 100 million Euro.

Ephrem Dessalegn, Managing Director of the enterprise, told Business Post that the enterprise has received 36 hectares of land from the city administration free from lease and managed to secure a loan from the French Government amounting to 100 million Euros at favorable terms.    

The construction of the new facility will start around mid-2015 and will be finalized within the next two and half years, according to Ephrem. 

Based on the feasibility study that was done by Meateng Consortium, a South African, New Zealand and Australian firm, although Ethiopia has significant livestock holdings, meat export levels are consistently low.

 Ephrem Dessalegn

A 2013 report of USAID on value chain analysis in the Ethiopian livestock industry states that the country’s meat exports represents less than one percent of global meat exports in 2011 and that most of this products encompassed low value chilled sheep and goat carcasses, with beef being an even smaller component of the  total sales.

Currently, AAAE only sells slaughter services to local wholesalers, retail butchers and businesses; it does not sell meat. To date, AAAE has been entirely a service operation and it owns neither the livestock nor the meat that is processed, and it has no involvement in sales or marketing of these products.  However, there is a demand in both local and international market.

According to Ephrem, the existing abattoir at Kera, established in the 1950’s, is beyond upgrade or refurbishment. It needs to be relocated to a suitable site and be replaced with a new abattoir designed with modern standards with a capacity suited for local and international market and slaughtering its own animals for processing and export meat.

Based on data gathered from AAAE, currently the enterprise is slaughtering 1200 cattle, 1500 sheep and goats per day for both Christian and Muslim customers. When the new abattoir starts operations, the average daily slaughter rates for cattle is expected to reach more than 5000, sheep and goat 10,000 and pigs 300. And also the enterprise will start to purchase livestock on its own account for slaughter, deboning, packing and export, processing up to 400 beef, 3,000 sheep and goat carcass per day as Halal product.

The new investment is expected to push cattle slaughter to be in excess of 250,000 head and 500,000 head of sheep and goats per annum by 2025.

The enterprise has also planned to build five satellite abattoirs as an adjunct to the central abattoir, providing a convenient, low volume local service for the city’s households and small neighborhood butchers.  It also provides an easily accessed alternative to informal slaughter activity, improving food safety and reducing the environmental pollution typically generated by informal slaughterers. According to Ephrem, the country has lost about 41 million birr per annum from the practice of illegal slaughter.

( Biyinam, Mahamuda, Mihret and  Redeit  contributed for this story )