AS part of efforts to strengthen Ghana’s food security and revitalised poultry industry, an expanded cold storage facility with storage capacity of 3,000 tonnes has been commissioned in Kpone in the Greater Accra Region.
The facility would aid in improving preservation, reduce post-harvest losses, stabilise supply and enhance food safety standards.
Additionally, a ground-breaking ceremony was performed for the construction of poultry value addition and processing complex.
Commissioning the projects, the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, said the investments made were strategic due to the transformational effect it had on the country’s agricultural value chain and its impact in reducing dependence on imports.
Mr Opoku said the projects aligned directly with the government’s flagship Feed Ghana Programme, which seeks to modernise agriculture and position livestock development at the centre of economic growth.
The Minister indicated that the country’s estimated annual import of poultry products bill over the years stood at US$300 million and US$400 million. This habit, he said, was economically unsustainable and inconsistent with national development objectives.
“It was time to rebuild domestic capacity across the entire poultry value chain, from hatchery to feed production, from farm to processing and from cold store to market,” he said.
Based on this, he said, the government launched the Poultry Industry Revitalisation sub-programme to address longstanding structural challenges within the sector.
“The Poultry Industry Revitalisation sub-programme seeks to deal with high feed costs, weak value-chain coordination, and limited access to quality day-old chicks, inadequate veterinary services, and insufficient processing and cold chain infrastructure,” Mr Opoku stressed.
The Minister said the investments also create a critical bridge between farmers and structured markets since increased production without processing and cold chain capacity would result in new bottlenecks.
The Managing Director of Beacon Source and Services Limited, Fidelis Kpeglor, said the projects aimed at promoting local value creation, enhancing industrial capacity and building skills within the country’s agro-processing sector.
The Presidential Adviser Hour Economic and Accelerated Export Development, Augustus Tanoh, said data available showed that frozen poultry was the third highest food import into the country behind cereals and the stomachs and guts of animals. Investments in the projects, Mr Tanoh said, would expand the country’s capacity to produce and process poultry at scale as well as capture a greater share of that imported demand through local production.
The Managing Director of Bostex Trading GmbH, Holger Inselmann said the projects and operations of Beacon signified a deliberate transformation from reliance on imports towards local value creation to that of industrial capabilities and skill development.
The German Ambassador to Ghana, Frederik Landshoft, indicated that apart from encouraging international partnership, the projects would strengthen resilience, reduce import dependence and contribute to food security and economic sovereignty which align closely with Ghana’s agricultural and industrial priorities.
FROM VICTOR A. BUXTON, TEMA
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