TANTRADE Acting Director General, Mr Edwin Rutageruka spoke glowingly about the prospects of the meat processing industry in Tanzania. He revealed that there is an ever-present demand for Tanzanian meat in Vietnam, Egypt and Comoro among other places which already have business deals agreed in principle.
Mr Rutageruka said that the demand for Tanzanian meat has increased in recent times with that only expected to rise further as shown by the rapid rise of Mwanza based local company, Chobo which has installed state of the art slaughtering and meat processing machines in the area that meet international standards.
“For many years we have been undertaking slaughtering and meat processing with local standards that could not attract potential foreign markets. But with the investment I have seen here, we are now capable of winning potential markets abroad and benefit economically ,” he said.
According to Mr Rutageruka, the availability of the meat market in Vietnam was declared recently by the Minister of Trade, Marketing and Investments, Mr Charles Mwijage after a visit he made into the country.
Rutageruka revealed his pride to see local investments progressing well. A number of plants in Tanzania are overseeing the installation of modern equipment and rapid scaling up which is a very positive sign for the industry.
Rutageruka went a step further and urged the local hoteliers and restaurateurs to enter into business with these local companies in opposition to taking their business overseas as the product available locally is of a similar quality of that obtained abroad and even better at times.
Also on this subject, Chobo Investment Operations Manager, Mr Charles Hotay said his company with a vastly improved production capacity, was now eying international markets come early next year.
Without going into details, he said the company has already secured a preliminary deal to supply 250 tons of meat to one of the countries in the Middle East, besides the new markets of Dubai, Egypt and Kuwait.
According to Mr Hotay, he cited some mining companies reducing their demand of meat from 8 tones that they used to order, to slightly a ton per month, something that was forcing them to look for alternative to survive in business.
Of late Tanzania has 25 meat processing plants with further records indicating that in 2015/2016 they produced 648,810 tons that included 319,112 Cattle meat, 129,292 Sheep and Goat meat, and 91,451 pork meat as well as 104,292 as poultry meat.
