TRIOMF East Africa will invest Rwf37bn ($38m) in a new milk processing plant in the Gicumbi District of northern Rwanda. The new plant will have an installed daily capacity of 252,000 litres, which will make it 2.5x larger than the largest dairy company in Rwanda.
TRIOMF East Africa is a joint venture firm owned by South African and Rwandan investors. Its Executive Chairman is Antoine Juru Munyakazi, a former Ambassador of Rwanda to Japan and current Executive Chairman of Somerset-Rwanda Ltd, a subsidiary of South African renewable energy company Somerset Group. TRIOMF is a South African based fertiliser company with interests in Eswatini and DRC.
The new plant will be sited in the Byumba Sector of Gicumbi District in Northern Province. It will be co-owned between TRIOMF (80%) and local farmers (20%). Construction of the plant is expected to have started by the end 2020 and to last for one year. So the factory will come on line around early 2022.
The plant will manufacture powdered milk – the aim being to create cheaper and less perishable dairy products to increase uptake of milk. A consistent problem in Rwanda’s dairy sector is an inability of dairy processors to process milk cost effectively and deliver it to retail markets at a competitive price. Powdered milk from the plant will also be sold into DRC.
The TRIOMF investment, which comes after the Rwandan government sold its stake in a failing dairy in northern Rwanda, will radically change the dynamics of the milk processing sector. The current largest dairy company in Rwanda, Inyange Industries, processes 100,000 litres of milk daily. The second largest player is Mukamira Dairy, which has a daily processing capacity of 40,000 litres of milk.
Existing powdered milk brands in Rwanda include market leader, Nestlé’s Nido brand, and Pearl Dairy’s Lato brand from Uganda, which was launched in Rwanda in April 2019.
