The fourth malt factory in the country, Soufflet Malt Ethiopia, is set to commence operations this coming March at its plant built inside Bole Lemi Industrial Park for a total investment of 70 million euros. Soufflet Malt Ethiopia, which is a French family-owned business, has a capacity of producing 100,000tn of malt a year from its plant built on 10ha of land in the industrial park. Soulfflet Malt has already created a barley supply chain of 25,000 farmers and plans to increase the number of beneficiaries to 40,000 when its factory goes fully operational. Soufflet signed a land lease agreement with the Industrial Park Development Corporation in 2018, a year after it inked a memorandum of understanding for the investment with the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) and the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA). Currently, Ethiopia has two operational malt factories, Gonder and Assela Malt factories. Boortmalt, a subsidiary of France’s largest grain cooperative, Axéréal, has also started the process of joining Debre Berhan Industrial Park in Amhara Regional State.