The state owned tobacco monopole, National Tobacco Enterprise (NTE), has acquired a new machine for the purpose of packaging and producing cigarettes at the cost of 140 Million Birr. The new machine is said to boost the enterprise’s annual capacity to six Billion cigarette sticks.

The newly bought machine, which is the third machine for the enterprise since its establishment, was supplied by an Italian company, G.D SpA.

When NTE was first established 70 years ago, it started production with a single machine and used the same machine for over 60 years. The next time it bought a machine was in 2003 for 150 Million Birr, which had the capacity of producing 7,000 cigarettes every minute. The latest acquisition gives the enterprise a boost by enabling it to produce 12,000 additional cigarette sticks each minute.

Ayele Alebel, the Enterprise’s Public Relations Officer, noted NTE has obtained 100 Million Birr loan from Developmental Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) for the purpose of buying the machine and covered the rest 40 Million Birr from its own.

He further noted, the machine has already arrived at the Modjo Dry Port terminal is expected to reach the factory in two weeks time.
According to Ayele the new machine is going to be fully operational by January 2015.

Recent years brought growing profits for the enterprise. in the just ended fiscal year it secured a total profit of 319.5 Million Birr. In the 2012/2013 fiscal year, NTE earned 280 Million Birr as its profit.

According to the NTE, over six billion cigarette sticks are smoked in Ethiopia every year. It further claims its brands take majority share from this figure, 62 percent, while the rest goes to cigarettes imported from China, Lithuania, Kenya and Germany.

Source: Fortune