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Nutropia assigns Agrotop to design and build Ethiopia’s most ambitious poultry project
Nutropia Poultry & Feed in Ethiopia choose Agrotop to develop a large-scale poultry integration project, which is expected to be one of the largest chicken Farms in Africa and the Middle East. The agreement was signed during the VIV Europe 2018 show in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Agrotop will design, build and equip the project and then provide know-how transfer and management services to Nutropia. With headquarters in Addis Ababa, the new farm will eventually produce 24,000 tons of chicken meat per year.
Nutropia plans to start with an initial investment capital of 20 million euro. The first stage, which is expected to start by the end of 2018, will consist of a hatchery, broiler farms and slaughterhouse capable of providing 4,700 tons of poultry meat annually.
The vertically integrated broiler and poultry feed farms will provide chicken meat at affordable prices to the domestic Ethiopian market and to the East African and Middle Eastern markets.
Once completed, the Nutropia project will include a parent stock rearing farm, a parent stock production farm, six broiler farms, a hatchery, slaughterhouse and poultry feed mill.
Stanley Kaye from Agrotop said that since his first meeting with Fasika Eyassu and Eyob Gebremariam, Nutropia founders, it wass obvious that we had the same cultural and economic aims and aspirations.
Agrotop will provide the latest technology to develop a project that is both economically efficient and environmentally sustainable. The strictest biosecurity standards will be adopted to safeguard bird and public health. Agrotop will provide experienced managers who will work alongside and train the local management so that good results will be assured from day one. The locally trained management will be the core that the future expansion will be built around.
“One of the main reasons for malnutrition in Ethiopia is the unavailability of cheap animal protein. Currently, only 12 percent of the country’s protein intake comes from animals,” explained Fasika Eyassu, Nutropia’s co-founder. “Nutropia is entering the market with the aim of closing this gap. We aim to restore dignity of mankind by ending hunger and malnutrition. We believe that great businesses tackle great problems.”
Ethiopia’s annual average chicken meat consumption is only half a kilo per year per person as compared to 2.3 kgs per year per person in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa and 41 kgs per year per person in Peru. With a population of more than 100 million people, Nutropia is well positioned to meet the growing need for cheap and easily obtained protein.
“After we conducted comprehensive research, we assigned Agrotop to lead the process of building the new farm,” Fasika said. “We visited the Chirina project constructed by Agrotop in Georgia and this is exactly what we had in mind.”
“The fact that Nutropia chose Agrotop to lead such an ambitious project illustrates our leading position in the field of poultry turnkey projects,” said Gavriel Pelleg, Agrotop’s CMO and founding partner. “We believe this project has sound business rationale and will make a real contribution to ensuring food security in Ethiopia.”