Share sales flow for Habesha Beer

By Muluken Yewondwossen

The under formation brewery, Habesha Beer, has announced that it collected more than enough capital to receive a loan to establish the plant.
The promoters collected about 130 million birr from the public shares sale, which is more than the 30 percent of total set-up costs needed to receive a loan for the remaining 70 percent. A month ago, the share company extended the sale until yesterday to meet its target. The promoters were able to collect about 102 million a month ago. But according to the project plan, the first plant's construction cost is 360 million birr, so to meet the 30 per cent initial capital target, the company needed an extra six million birr.

According to Eskinder Desta, the main promoter of Habesha and managing director of Habesha Capital Service, a company that controls the shares sale, 22 million birr more than was needed was collected. He told Capital the company will officially receive 7.5 hectares of land from Debre Birhan administration next Saturday.

The project management team led by Mekonnen Abebe, ex-executive officer of marketing at Ethiopian Airlines, is facilitating a bid for the end of May for equipment purchasing and is also evaluating a local consultant firm's application to prepare a feasibility study that will be delivered to lenders.
The sale that opened in October last year is in order to establish two breweries at Debre Birhan and Menagesha.

Debre Berhan, 100km northeast of Addis Ababa and Menagesha, 20km west of the capital, are popular places for barley harvesting and have enormous water resources, both of which are basic inputs for beer production.

According to Habesha's prospectus, the first factory at Debre Berhan will produce 300,000 hectolitres of beer by September 2011. The other factory at Menagesha will have the same production capacity per annum.

Recently, another brewery, Raya, offered share to the public in order to construct a plant in Maichew in Tigray Regional State.
Yesterday, Raya Beers promoters organised an event on the land they secured from Maichew Administration with the attendance of government officials and potential buyers.

Capital