Revolutionizing Animal Feed Production: A Look Inside Gorilla Feed’s New Processing Plant in Rwanda
By Kanamugire Emmanuel
The animal feed processing company, ‘Gorilla Feed’ is about to launch a new processing plant located in Kigali Special Economic Zone, which is expected to increase production and contribute to the reduction of the price of animal feed across the country.
Animal feed in Rwanda has been a critical issue due to its high demand and high prices because most of them were imported.
Gorilla Feed has been operating in Kicukiro District, City of Kigali since 2015, involving in the production of animal feed for pigs, poultry, cattle, among others where most of row materials are cereals grown in Rwanda.
Through the partnership for Resilient and Inclusive Small Stock Market Project (PRISM-Enabel), aiming to contribute to the reforms and transformation of the pork, poultry and animal feed value chains, Gorilla Feed Processing Company received a support of machinery to enhance production capacity and quality of feed and meet food safety standards for domestic and external markets.
This machinery worthy 600,000 euros is being installed in the new processing plant which will have the capacity of producing three times of the existing plant in Rubilizi zone, from five metric tons per one hour to 15 metric tons.
The manager of Gorilla Feed, Mr. Kivuye Janvier said, “The reason why we want to increase the production capacity is that the number of people who need animal feeds is still high; sometimes a farmer who asked for one metric ton could only receive about 200 kilos due to the shortage of the production.”
“Farmers have increased so the new equipment will help us not to turn customers away. We are safe because of Enabel’s support, without it we could experience a big gap.”
Mr. Kivuye assured that with the new plant, the animal feed will be available in a good quantity and losses the farmers used to face in terms of transportation will be eliminated.
He also pointed out that this factory has brought about many changes because now the farmer can receive quality feeds which was not the case for the imported ones which could delay at the borders and risk being close to the expiring time before they are consumed.
The average price of the animal feeds is between Rwf550-580 per kilo, Mr. Kivuye says today this factory is stable and in the near future they plan to expand the production capacity to at least 30 metric tons per hour and increase the number of workers it employs from 60 to 140.
The Partnership for Resilient and Inclusive Small Stock Market project (PRISM-Enabel) in partnership with Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) started in July 2019 until June 2024. It is a five year project having a total budget of Euro 15.5M to contribute to the reforms and transformation of the pork, poultry and animal feeds value chains by facilitating a private sector investment, market growth and competitiveness resilience to climate change and by strengthening the capacities of farmers across 10 districts in Rwanda.
Ten Private companies (four in poultry, two in pig farming, and four in animal feeds) received machinery, equipment, and technology to enhance their production capacity and quality. Over 399 value chain actors (310 males, and 89 females) received loans totaling Rwf2,1 billion, that triggered about Rwf10.38 Billion. These loans supported 193 piggery, 192 poultry, and 14 animal feed projects.
