Tanzania: New Technology to Reduce Post Harvest Loss of Maize

By Hellen Nachilongo

Dar es Salaam — A new technology to avoid post-harvest losses of maize set to be introduced, following the installation process of

weigh scales and silos facilities to increase production of mealie meal.

The machines will enable to measure the weight of vehicles carrying 60 tonnes of maize at once while the other will enable to dry maize, grind, package and store 1000 tonnes of mealie meal at once.

The initiative has been funded Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) that provided Sh590 million loan to Real Worlds Industry to enable the purchase of the facility.

According to Real World executive director Mr Salvior Chanay the machine have been ordered and anytime from now they will receive them and the installation process will start.

"Once we install the technologies, production capacity of mealie meal will increase to 60 tonnes daily unlike in the past when we used to produce only 10 tonnes of mealie meal per day while the daily demand was 30 tonnes he said.

According to him, the new technologies will enable them expand mealie distribution in Dar es Salaam, Lindi, Mtwara and Newala as they look forward to cover other regions such as Dodoma .

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Explaining further, Mr Chanay said previously they only distributed mealie meal in few outlets, Dar es Salaam such as Kigamboni but, with the new equipment's they will cover Ubungo, Temeke, Kinondoni and Ilala.

He stressed that they expect the production capacity of mealie meal to increase to 10,800 tonnes annually from the current 5000 tonnes.

"The machines that we have are too small and most of the time we used labour workers to increase production but made us to lose a lot of maize during processing,"he said.

TADB executive director, Mr Japhet Justine said the bank's strategy was to bring sustainable development in the agricultural sector and to benefit farmers.

"Through industries we believe that even smallholders can benefit in the market. We also aim to connect farmers with industries to enable sharing opportunities in the value chain," he said.

According to him, in order to jointly boost the economy of the country, manufactures who package and process must work together.

Mr Justine added that the bank will continue to provide a wide range of services to farmers and industries to the agricultural sector.