The Dangote Group, owned by
Africa's richest man, Aliko Dangote, has opened a tomato-processing factory
near Nigeria's northern city of Kano aimed at vying for the local market with
imports from China.
"We have fully started
operations today and the target is 1,200 metric tons per day," the
managing director of Dangote Farms Limited, which runs the plant, Abdulkareem
Kaita, said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg.
"We are going to work with the
farmers, they can afford to produce more because there's a processing factory
and they don't have to suffer losses like they did before."
The plant that will produce 1,200
metric tons per day was built following a 2011 Central Bank of Nigeria study that
showed it was cheaper to process tomato paste locally than import from China,
the source of about 300,000 tons a year worth $360 million.
Yet the country produces 1.5
million tons of tomatoes annually of which about 900,000 tons rot, according to
the Agriculture Ministry.
Dangote's facility will produce
more than 400,000 tons of paste annually, with most of its raw material coming
from farmers in the Kadawa Valley in Kano state.
Farmers will receive a guaranteed
price of about $700 per ton compared to an average of less than $350 now,
according to estimates by the central bank, which helped organise the farmers
and arrange credit from banks.
The Dangote Group owns businesses
including cement plants, flour mills, fruit canning plants, palm oil refineries,
salt and oil assets.
Soource: allAfrica.com
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