ANGOLA – Angola has opened the first wheat flour factory in the south-central part of the nation in the town of Chinguar in Bié Province, located on the premises of the Chinguar Logistics and Distribution Center (CLOD) headquarters.
Owned by farmer Alfeu Vinevala, the manufacturing unit with a processing capacity of 60 tons/ has already started operating on an experimental basis and will be fully operational in September 2024.
According to Alfeu Vinevala, who did not elaborate on the value used, all the raw material for transforming wheat into flour is produced on the Vinevala farm.
He said that the factory could start up, 100 percent, in September 2024, at which point he hopes to also place the pasta, bakery, and seed processing factories, to join the corn industry, already in operation.
He pointed out that, by September of next year, five thousand direct and indirect jobs could be reached throughout the farm, compared to the current close to four thousand jobs.
Alfeu Vinevala therefore requested the Government to install an electrical energy transformation station (PT) in this CLOD area, to enable industries to work regularly.
He also assured that, in the current agricultural season, the farm plans to cultivate five thousand and 200 hectares of wheat, two thousand more compared to the last campaign. The idea, according to him, is to double the previous harvest, when the figure of 10 thousand tons of wheat was reached.
During the last agricultural season, the Vinevala farm produced more than 18 thousand tons of various products, with emphasis on 10 thousand tons of wheat, 500 tons of corn, and 200 tons of beans. They also add soybeans, peas, tomatoes, pineapple, and reindeer potatoes.
The investment is timely, and comes at a time when the Angolan government targets to meet the local wheat demand through a raft of measures.
In October, the government relaunched the National Plan for the Promotion of Grain Production (Planagrão) in a bid to speed up the wheat production target of 229,000 tonnes from the current 8,000 tonnes annually.
Launched by the Angolan Executive in December 2022, the “Planagrão program seeks to increase cereal production (wheat, rice, soya, and maize) from the current level of around three million tonnes/year to six million tonnes by 2027.
According to officials, the wheat production market in Angola is already starting to show positive signs, mainly due to the gradual increase in supply and the number of farmers interested in this crop.
The director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Studies, Planning, and Statistics Office, Anderson Jerónimo, believes that the country is on the right track and predicts a reduction in wheat grain imports of around 30 or 40 percent over the next three years if the country continues to grow this cereal at the same rate.
According to Anderson Jerónimo, the current motivation for farmers to grow the product is essentially being driven by the emergence of some factories that process the cereal into wheat flour.
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