Dangote’s tomato-processing factory closes again due to poor supply

The management of Dangote Farms Limited’s tomato-processing factory in Kano has for the second time within a year closed the factory as a result of poor supply of tomatoes by farmers contracted to produce the raw material exclusively for the factory.

 

Aliko Dangote
Chairman, Dangote Group

According to Abdulkareem Kaita, Manager of the factory, the management took the tough decision of closing down the factory again because the quantity of tomatoes produced by the farmers cannot meet the needs of the company. He, however, promised that the factory will reopen as soon as supplies improve well enough to meet the needs of the company’s operation.

The tomato-processing factory was established by Dangote Farms to end the cycle of waste in the tomato trade where about 60 percent of the country’s annual output of 1.5 million tonnes rots away while the country imports about 300,000 tonnes of the product every year from China.

Meanwhile, Dangote’s tomato-processing factory has the capacity to process 1,200 metric tonnes of tomatoes per day for an output of 400,000 tonnes of paste every year.

According to the executive, tomato farmers contracted by the group to supply the input needed by the processing unit are reluctant to grow the crop. This after close to a third of Nigeria’s tomato harvest was ravaged by a pest known as tuta absoluta during the previous season.

“I lost almost everything, so I was really afraid to plant tomatoes again,” said Musa Alasan, a tomato grower in Samawa, near Kano.

About 8,000 farmers in the Kadawa Valley, not far from Kano, were contracted to supply Dangote’s factory at a guaranteed price of $700 per ton as compared to an average of less than $350 in the domestic market.