Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inaugurated Sheger Bakery, which is dubbed as the largest bakery and flour factory in Africa with a potential of baking 1.8 million loaves of bread every day in three shifts.
“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.
It is stated that including those working in the factory some 3,400 people in Addis Ababa will get job at the factory and in distribution lines of the bread.
The Sheger bakery is built by MIDROC Ethiopia, which is owned by the Ethio Saudi billionaire Sheikh Mohammed Hussien Al Amoudi. Built with 900 million birr, the state-of-the-art bakery has a capacity to make 1.8 million loaves of bread a day and 80,000 an hour.
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 bakery has four silos each with a storage capacity of 30,000 quintals of wheat, 12 ovens, 13 mixers, and two cooling towers capable of cooling 140,000 loaves of bread a minute. It has 357 permanent employees and 23 food vans each capable of carrying 24,000 loaves of bread at once.
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 project was initiated by the Deputy Mayor Takele Uma.
The Addis Abeba City Administration and Sheger Bakery and Flour Factory, an industrial-scale bakery agreed to sale the products at reasonable prices.
The company has 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 plant consumes five megawatts of power during peak hours, according to electrical engineers of the Factory. It has three stand-alone generators that produce 3.2MW in total.