Kenya Meat to spend Sh500m on plant upgrade

The Kenya Meat Commission. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By STANLEY NGOTHO AND CONSTANT MUNDA

Summary

• The Kenya Meat Commission will replace its old machines, some aged 70 years.

The Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) is set to spend Sh500 million on upgrade of its Athi-River plant to boost production and efficiency.

The government-owned meat processor will have its critical ancient machines aged up to 70 years replaced with modern ones currently being installed by Turkish company, Sanet Meat Industries. 

According to the Turkish cooperation and coordination agency (Tika), the new equipment will improve efficiency in slaughtering and handling meat and its products by up to 80 per cent from the current 28 per cent. 

Corned beef packaging will increase up to 72 tonnes per slaughter of 2,000 cattle.

Increase in the number of animals slaughtered in the facility is expected to improve income of farmers who supply the firm. 

Automation of the de-hiding sector is anticipated to reduce hides and skins wastage to 5 per cent from 40 per cent currently. 

Dehorning, de-hiding and separation of meat parts will be done by machines with minimal manpower used to slaughter animals. 

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Horns, hides and skins will be another major source of income to the company as the market is readily available locally.

 The introduction of modern slaughtering machines is also expected to significantly reduce the number of employees by up to 40 per cent. 

Current the plant employs 320 staff with most of them being in the slaughtering department.  

Production manager Gaudachia Nyabira said digitisation will highly boost production of the ailing meat processor.

“The plant currently fully depends on manpower since all machines are analogue making slaughtering tiresome. It takes over 60 men one hour to slaughter 50 cattle and that’s too long,” said Ms Nyabira.