Import Solution as Malt Factory Faces Barley Shortage

The Assela Malt Factory’s investment of 300 million Br, intended to halt the import of malt, has ironically forced its management to import 260,000qls of barely at an estimated cost of 272.5 million Br, Fortune learnt.

Located on the outskirts of Assela town in the Arsi Zone, Tiya Woreda of the Oromia Region, the factory assumed that it would get its inputs from the surrounding areas, famed for their barley production.

However, the contemplated amount of barely supply in the expansion project is not flowing all year round. This has presented the Company with the risk of running out of stock in two months time.

“The domestic supply has basically stopped, yet the factory needs 40,000qls of malt barley every month to continue production,” said Amare Wakjira, managing director of the Assela Malt Factory. “We need to have a secured channel of supply; otherwise the situation is not sustainable.”

The factory normally gets more than 90pc of its domestic barley inputs through traders who collect the crop from smallholder farmers in the Arsi zone of Oromia Regional State and the Sidama zone in the Southern Regional State. Nonetheless, the factory tries to encourage farmers’ cooperatives and unions to supply it directly, according to its strategic plan.

But the domestic supply has not proven to be reliable, especially in recent years. Consequently, the factory has imported barley in the past, most recently last year.

Even though the extraction amount of imported barley is better, the locally produced barley also has its own merits in terms of better taste, experts in the industry agree.

The Company currently buys a quintal of local malt barley at a cost of 900 Br to 1,050 Br, depending on the quality of the product. Whereas, the management plans to import barley from abroad at around 1,048 Br a quintal, including transportation costs up to the factory gate, Amare said.

Officials from the Agricultural Bureau of Oromia Region have various reasons for the shortage of malt barley, according to him.

“They believe that there is a hoarded harvest by the farmers and we are looking into this possibility with them,” the manger told Fortune.

If the supposedly hoarded product does not materialise, the management has decided to order the import of around 260,000qls of barley, which will see it through until the next harvest season in January. But this will go ahead after the approval of the board of directors of the Company, which is expected to happen within a month.

The Malt Factory needs more than 600,000qls of raw malt barley to produce 360,000qls of malt in a year.

“If we didn’t import the barley and produce malt, the beer factories would import the malt directly, with which they are covering more than 60pc of their demand already,” the manager of the factory, which employs about 260 workers, noted.

According to data from the Ethiopian Revenue & Customs Authority (ERCA), 5,425tn of malt was imported in 2003 at a cost of 2.8 million dollars. This number had grown more than 15 fold by last year, forcing the country to spend 47.3 million dollars on the import of malt.

Established 30 years ago, the factory has been the sole supplier of malt to the local beer industry, the production capacity of which has reached about four million hectolitres. This, in turn, has raised the demand for malt by the industry to 99,540tns, in 2011/12.

This was before the coming of the Gondar Malt Factory of the Tiret Endowment Investment Organizstions (TEIO). Established with an investment of 670 million Br, in Gondar, in the Amhara Regional State, the factory has a production capacity of 16,200tns of malt a year. Close to three quarters of its produce is for its  sister company, Dashen Brewery.

There are five companies, namely – BGI Ethiopia, Harer Brewery Share Company, Bedele Brewery Share Company, Meta Brewery Factory and Beer Garden – that buy malt from the factory.

Assela Malt Factory sold close to 220 quintals of malt worth 345 million Birr to these five companies in 2011/12. BGI Ethiopia, producer of Saint George beer, was the main buyer, taking 56pc of the total sales in 2011/12.

Barley is the fifth most important cereal crop in the country after maize, wheat, teff and sorghum, and it is produced on about one million hectares of land. Of the total barley production of 1.7 million tonnes in 2010/11, Arsi and Bale contributed close to 20pc.

Yet, this has not resulted in a sustainable supply of barley to the malt factory in the locality. Nega Wubeneh, senior director of Value Chain Programs at the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), criticises the uncoordinated value chain in crop production for this.

There are also farming differences between wheat and barley on the level fields of the Arsi and Bale lands, according to Nega.

Since the production of wheat is more economically reasonable, with higher yields in amount and price, farmers prefer to plant wheat. Therefore, high yielding malt barley seeds must be distributed and buyers should give a better price for the farmers with future market if possible, to change the trend.

There are at least two projects that have been initiated by two international brands operating in the country to help solve the malt barley shortages.

Deageo – owner of the Meta breweries and Heineken breweries, which acquired the Harar and Bedele beer factories – have started production improvement programs of malt barley on small holder farms in tthe Sebeta and Arsi areas of the Oromia Regional State. This has been done in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and the ATA over the last two years, even though the results are not enough to satisfy the factory’s demand.


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