info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
Image from Britannica
The poultry industry is an important sub-sector of agriculture in Ethiopia. Poultry meat accounts for 5% of the country's total meat production. At present, the current Ethiopian poultry population is about 56 million, but the average per capita consumption is less than 1 kg, which indicates that there is a huge gap between supply and demand, and the poultry industry has great potential.
The local industry
Now-a-days, there are a medium-scale and large-scale commercial importers of poultry and service materials in both the private and public sectors. Public sector importers include the agricultural research institutes such as Debre Zeit Agricultural Research Centre. There are more than 20 private large scale commercial poultry production farms, all of which are located in and around Addis Ababa, particularly in and around Debre-Zeit. Private sector poultry farms generally comprise a few dozen producers, the largest of which are Elfora Agro-Industries, Alema and Genesis. ELFORA, Alema and Genesis are the top 3 largest commercial poultry farms with modern production and processing facilities.
ELFORA has large scale poultry farms at 4 different locations and sub-locations. The slaughtering service has a capacity of 1,000,000 kg/year broilers. Alema Farm is the second largest enterprise with a capacity of 400,000 broiler chickens per annum including distribution capacity of up to 500,000 day old chickens.Other large scale commercial (with 2,500 to 50,000) poultry farms located in and around the capital with a collective capacity of 208,000 broilers per annum.
Local Market
Most of the indigenous breeds are marketed through traditional open markets all over the country. The sales of poultry products reach its pick during holidays mainly during Christian holidays.Modern poultry farms are distributing their products through retailers and supermarkets. Popular large size supermarkets in Addis Ababa are selling between 20 and 50kgs of poultry meat per day. Hotels and restaurants are among the main customers of poultry farms. Large scale suppliers are preferred suppliers to many supermarkets because of the consistency of supply and quality.
There are also small scale poultry meat suppliers to supermarkets. Some restaurants prefer to buy from small scale poultry meat supplier because of its relatively lower weight, to benefit from low price. The trend of sales from supermarket is increasing recently. The changes in life style, the increase in income, the comparative increase of beef meat are expected to be among the contributing factors for the increase in sales of poultry meat from supermarkets.
