MIDROC Technology Group inaugurated the third major expansion project in a month, pushing the total investment for the projects to 574 million Br.

In the latest round of expansion, the company invested 229 million Br to expand three factories under Daylight Applied Technology Plc, a company established to produce glass products, electronic home appliances and assemble electronic devices.

Two weeks ago MIDROC Technology, founded by the Ethio-Saudi business tycoon Mohammed Hussein Ali AL-Amoudi (Sheik), announced the expansion of Summit Partners Plc, WANZA and Addis Gas for a total of 286 million Br. Four weeks ago the Group opened the eighth branch of Queens Supermarket by investing 59.3 million Br.

Cork, tin can and glass factories have undergone the latest expansions. The inauguration of three factories located at Legetafo was held last Thursday, August 15, 2019, with the presence of Arega Yirdaw (PhD), CEO of MIDROC Technology Group, and Teka Gebreyesus, state minister for Trade & Industry.

The Group expanded the factories in response to the call of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) to boost the economy, according to Arega.

"We're expanding to different new projects to support the initiative," he said.

Daylight Applied operates two crown cork factories, which were established with 72 million Br in investment and employ 53 workers. One can produce 700,000 crown corks in just eight hours, while the other can produce double that amount in the same period.

Using coating and printing and blanking and lining machinery, the crown cork factories produce different sizes of corks and print customer logos on the corks. The factories produce 1.8 billion corks a year, which are used to seal bottled products like soft drinks and beer.

Moha Soft Drink Industry S.C, one of the affiliates of MIDROC Group, has a demand of 1.4 billion corks a year and began buying 20pc of its demand from Daylight five months ago.

“Two years ago we faced a shortage of crown corks, which forced us to produce only 40pc of our capacity,”  said Getachew Birbo, CEO at Moha.

The second factory, a tin can plant, was built for 57 million Br and can produce 36,000 tin cans in three different sizes in eight hours. The factory, which employs 60 people, has two sections, the body making line and the end making line. The factory produces 28 million tin cans a year, which are used for packaging peeled tomatoes, tomato paste, vegetables and meat soups.

The third factory going through expansion is a glass bottle factory that rests on 10,000Sqm of land out of the total 26,431Sqm of land possessed by Daylight Applied. The glass bottle factory was built for 100 million Br and can produce 30,000 to 36,000 glass bottles in eight hours and 12 million glass bottles a year.