President John Dramani Mahama has officially broken ground for the construction of a Poultry, Meat, and Feed Processing Factory at Bechem in the Ahafo Region.
This forms part of the Government’s flagship poultry revitalisation programme, the Nkoko Nketenketen Project.
The Facility, which will slaughter three thousand birds daily, will take 12 months to complete.
President Mahama said the Bechem Poultry, Meat and Feed Processing Facility had been conceived as a state-of-the-art agro-industrial hub.
He noted that the complete ecosystem would power the entire poultry value chain and that the facility included a modern feed processing plant to produce high quality affordable feed, a hygienic meat processing unit equipped to meet both domestic and export standards.
This would also include a training academy for young people, young farmers and technical personnel, dormitories, and residential facilities to support long-term training, cold storage, and dry warehouses to safeguard product quality and reduce losses.
The President said the facility was one of the several anchor projects designed to reposition Ghana as a competitive player in the poultry and livestock industry.
“This is not merely an industrial plant; it’s a center of excellence for poultry development, innovation, research and agribusiness incubation,” he stated.
“It will serve as a magnet for private sector investment and a foundation for rural industrialization.”
President Mahama noted that similar processing plants were planned for other parts of the country to offtake the increased poultry production resulting from the Nkoko Nketenketen Project
Mr Eric Opoku, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, said the Facility would have a component that would treat waste from the factory into feed for fisheries and poultry, and fertilizers for farmers.