The National Tobacco Enterprise of Ethiopia is seeking financial sources to purchase machinery able to produce 20,000 pieces of cigarette per minute at an estimated cost of around 142 million Br.
The Enterprise purchased its second machine in 2003 since it started production in 1941. Together these two machines have the capacity of producing 7,000 cigarettes per minutes it was stated by to Ayele Alebel, public relations officer of the Enterprise.
The enterprise is not able to satisfy the market demand with this production capacity currently that it covers only 62 percent of the market He added. The annual demand is around 6.5 billion pieces of cigarettes in 2012, but the company is producing only 3.7 billion sticks according to Ayele.
Despite of the drawbacks of the enterprise is making a net profit of 246 million Birr from the sales of 3.7 billion sticks.The Ethiopian Tobacco Enterprise has also applied to the Development Bank of Ethiopia and two other financial institutions for 100 million Birr for the purchase of new machinery that could help to fill the demand gap.
Currently the enterprise is producing a single brand called Nigusu, four filter-tipped and one non-filtered, Normal Nyala, Premium Nyala, Delight and Elleni, and non-filtered Gissilla. It is also imports and distributes Rothmans and Marlboro from UK and USA.
Source: Fortune
