A new edible oil factory in Bure town, in the West Gojjam zone of the Amhara region, was expected to employ 2,000 people once fully running and to supply a large share of the cooking oil Ethiopia now imports, New Business Ethiopia reported in July 2019, citing the broadcaster Fana Broadcasting Corporate.
The factory’s general manager, Dagnachew Wasse, said the plant had a production capacity of 1,400 tons of cooking oil and could cover 60 percent of national demand. It was built on 30 hectares of land. By early July the sheds were finished and machinery was being installed.
The factory is owned by Belayneh Kinde, an agribusiness investor who also owns the Ethiopian Hotel in Addis Ababa and exports farm goods such as oil seeds. The total investment was close to 2.1 billion birr, about $73 million at the time, and the plant was designed to process sunflower and soybeans grown in Ethiopia.
Cooking oil imports are a steady drain on the country’s scarce foreign currency. In the same week, State Minister of Finance Eyob Tekalign told parliament that “we are still importing wheat and edible oil which in an economy like Ethiopia is really unacceptable.”
Sources: New Business Ethiopia, New Business Ethiopia (finance ministry report)