Work on agro-industrial complex in Mali restarts

Mali’s Ministry of Livestock has signed an agreement to restart the stalled Tienfala agricultural project in the country

After being stalled for nearly two years, the agro-industrial project will now be taken up and completed by SLK Consultants and Developers Group Limited SA (SLK-Mali). The facility will be involved in the production of beef, poultry, fish, cattle feed, poultry feed and developing and transforming the feed lot site.

To be built at the cost of US$13mn, the Tienfala facility is expected to start production in 2016. In its first phase, it will produce 12,000 tonnes of tilapia fish, including a processing and packaging plant. It will also produce 270,000 layers poultry farms to produce about 20mn eggs per year and about 1,500 tonnes of poultry meat. A feed mill plant will also be constructed which has an estimated capacity of 15,000 tonnes of feed.

The second phase of the project will see the construction of a slaughterhouse with a capacity of 40 tonnes of meat per day, and an agro-industrial centre for the processing plant with an area of 10,000 sq m of greenhouses for vegetable cultivation.

According to Yosi Lapid from SLK-Mali, the company will use latest technology to build the entire facility which will benefit Malian farmers. He said that the project will create jobs and produce more high quality meat, fish, eggs and vegetables at reasonable prices.

Dr. Bocari Treta, minister of rural development, said that the project was part of the country’s efforts to upgrade infrastructure and processing to international standards of agro-products.