Export Market - The Sheba Sesame Tehina Factory, owned by Tiret Endowment, will begin producing tehina, a paste made from sesame seed oil and flour, on November 2012. Tiret, which is renovating the factory, assumed complete ownership of Sheba from two Israeli investors in February 2011. The goal of Sheba, which is located in the town of Gonder, 685km from Addis Abeba, is to enter the tehina export market. The factory was built at a cost of 18 million Br, with Tiret initially having a 25pc share in the factory, while the Israelis owned the remaining 75pc.

"The factory was fully managed by the Israeli investors, and mismanagement resulted in financial problems, prompting the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) to foreclose the factory," Tadesse Kassa, CEO of Tiret, told Fortune.

"It took us almost a year to end the contract with the Israeli investors, and the foreclosure process with the DBE pressured us into quickly coming to a deal," he said.

The factory is now undergoing restructuring following the complete takeover of the factory by Tiret.

Tiret, established in 1995, is an endowment in the Amhara Regional State that pools resources under the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), and the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Ambassel Trading House Plc, an affiliate of Sheba, has started constructing a warehouse capable of stocking 1,500tn of sesame. Sheba will produce 3,000tn of tehina a year and 120tn of sesame from its 50ht sesame farm in Metekel, located in Benishangul Gumuz Regional State, 600km from Addis Abeba.

Ethiopia is among the top sesame producing countries with production in 2009/10 reaching 260,534tn and earning 358.5 million dollars in exports. In the same year, India produced 34.9 million tonnes of sesame a year, while Sudan, Nigeria, and China, produce 400,000tn, 200,000tn and 600,000tn, respectively.

The amount of sesame production in the 2008/09 fiscal year was 216,504tn, using 315,843ht of farmland.

The factory envisions itself playing a great role in providing peeled, colour sorted, sieved and well prepared tehina for local demand and for export, by adding value to its products.

Hadra Ahmed

Addis Fortune/21/07/2011