Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inaugurated Sheger Bread Factory, the largest bakery and flour factory in Africa. Built in Kaliti on 41,000 square meters of land, it will be able to reduce the current cost of a 100 gram bread to 1 birr and 20 cents down from three birr. “The Sheger Bread Factory we inaugurated today and which took 10 months from conception to finalization is symbolic of our path to prosperity. Producing 80,000 pieces of bread per hour, availing it affordable prices will contribute to food security,” Abiy said.
The bakery and the factor is built by MIDROC Ethiopia, Sheger Bread Factory cost around 900 million birr. Expected capacity is 2 million loaves of bread per day. In addition (including those working in the factory) some 3,400 people in Addis Ababa will be employed at the factory and in the distribution of the bread across four corners of the city.
“The Sheger Bakery which took 10 months from conception to finalization is symbolic of our path to prosperity. Producing 80,000 pieces of bread per hour, availing it at affordable prices will contribute to food security in Addis Ababa and the surrounding cities,” PM Abiy said.
The bakery, which uses automated machinery, will source flour from a plant that was built next to the bakery. Resting on 4.1 hectares, the bakery and the flour processing plant is located in Akaki Qality Sub City. MIDROC imported the machinery for the bread and flour from Italy, while the transformers were shipped in from China.
The flour factory can produce 2,224 quintals of flour a day, from which the bakery uses 1,200 quintals, and the excess 1,024 quintals of flour will go to the market, according to Abinet Gebremeskel, CEO of the project management office and general manager of MIDROC Construction Ethiopia.
The flour factory will source its wheat supply from Horizon Plantation’s farm and other cooperative unions, as well as through import.
The Addis Abeba City Administration and Sheger Bakery and Flour Factory, an industrial-scale bakery agreed to sell the products at reasonable prices.
The company procured 150,000 quintals of wheat from Ukraine that will be used for three months of production. The first of six batches of the supply has reached the factory.
The Factory has so far prepared 23 food vans to distribute the bread to 10 districts throughout the capital. Unemployed youth are organized by the City’s Job Creation and Enterprise Development Bureau across 116 woredas.
