A Sweet Name Returns, on Machinery from the Past

Jul 12 , 2026. By GEBRU KAHSAY ( SPECIAL TO FORTUNE ) , WORKINEH DIRIBSA ( SPECIAL TO FORTUNE )

After a 14-year absence, a nostalgic sweet brand returned to shelves, resurrected by Wonji, one of the country's eight sugar factories, with production resuming in late February. According to company executives of Wonji Shoa Confectionery Factory, the comeback has been anything but smooth, running only four months before ageing machinery and fuel shortages forced a halt. The old equipment, which depends on diesel and coal, limits output and drives up the cost of running the plant, report GEBRU KAHSAY & WORKINEH DIRIBSA, SPECIAL TO FORTUNE

For generations of Ethiopian children, the crackle of a colourful wrapper and the sweet taste of Desta Candy stood for small pleasures.

Sold in neighbourhood shops in towns across the country, the confectionery known widely as “Desta Keremela” - happiness in Amharic - settled into everyday childhood memory before it vanished from the shelves for more than a decade.

After a 14-year absence, the candy has come back. It was revived by Wonji, one of the eight sugar factories operating in the country, with production resuming in late February this year. The return has been anything but smooth.

The Factory ran for only four months after it restarted, held back by ageing machinery and fuel shortages. The old equipment, which depends on diesel and coal, limits how much it can make, raises the cost of running it and adds to the pressure on day-to-day operations.

Expectations had been high among consumers and traders once the revival was announced, and orders came in from across the market. The response from traders after the announcement was, by the Company's account, overwhelming, with requests arriving from across the market.

The contradiction, its managers conceded, is that more than half of the candy produced still sits unsold, even as the Factory maintained that demand had never weakened. An outdated production system quickly became the obstacle that undid them.

The Factory restarted Desta Candy on machines installed around 1962. As they lose efficiency and imported fuel grows dearer, the Company plans to move its operations to electricity, a shift expected to ease production problems, though the investment it demands is large.

Rising fuel prices and shortages have increased the cost of making the candy, and the Company settled on new electric machinery as the most practical option, even as Leulseged conceded that the outlay would place a considerable financial burden on the Factory.

With capacity falling as the machines faltered, the Factory produced only 2,300Qtls of Desta Candy, disclosed Leulseged Teshome, chief executive officer (CEO) of Wonji Shoa Confectionery Factory.

Despite the Company's insistence that demand stayed strong, it sold less than half, with 1,000Qtls reaching the market and about 1,300Qtls left in storage after ALIM Trading Plc, the brand's sole distributor, rejected a 24.2pc price increase a kilogram, to 410 Br.

Leulseged tied the adjustment to rising production costs, among them a jump in excise tax by 10pc to 25pc and a 20 Br rise in the price of sugar a kilogram, one of the main inputs in candy making.

Abdella Muktar, chief executive of ALIM Trading Plc, called the new price "unfair,” the Company was in a promotional phase. The Factory acknowledged the concern, and formed a committee to look into the matter.

Desta Candy returned with the same nine original flavours that built its name, among them lemon, coffee, orange and honey. The taste was familiar, but the presentation showed the trouble of restarting after years of absence.

A string of operational difficulties had already delayed the comeback. According to Leulseged, obtaining a trade licence, securing approval from the Ethiopian Food & Drug Authority (EFDA), and shortages of packaging paper pushed back the return after the Factory announced the restart in May 2025.

Four months after the candy finally reached the market at the end of February 2026, production stopped. It has now been suspended for a month due to fuel shortages and the persistent problems associated with inefficient, ageing machinery.

The first difficulty was packaging, with a worn-out wrapping machine keeping the Company from holding its branding on the product. The wrapping machines had become unreliable and could not maintain steady operation.

"There were times when the company was forced to pack Desta Candy manually," Leulseged said.

For ALIM Trading, the fault carried into the market, the distributor claiming that inconsistent presentation and packaging weakened the product against newer brands that have invested in modern packaging systems.

The candy came back leaning on its recognised flavours while it struggled to restore a visual identity half a century old. The problem was settled after the distributor asked the Factory to fix it.

Before any of that reshapes production, the Factory has to overcome the consequences of years of under-investment. Desta Candy had a daily capacity of 80Qtls when operations resumed after more than a decade away. Over the months that followed, output fell sharply to 24Qtls a day as the machines deteriorated.

The Company produced an average of 575Qtls a month and 143.7Qtls a week. The machine, idled 15 years ago, when Desta Candy was first discontinued, is under maintenance at the Amhara Metal Industry & Machine Technology Development Enterprise.

The Company is installing two American-made wrapping machines, each able to pack 600 candies a minute, at a cost of nearly 13.4 million Br, Leulseged disclosed. It is also preparing to replace its outdated energy system with an electric boiler bought for 42.9 million Br, rated at 95pc efficiency, compared with diesel at 80pc and coal at 75pc.

The power transformer the boiler needs is estimated at a further 35.9 million Br. Managers project that the project should recover its total investment of 214.18 million Br in less than two years, a rapid capital recovery that a feasibility study presents as evidence of limited financial risk.

According to Leulseged, the new machines are almost ready for installation, but bringing the upgraded system online raises another problem, such as securing the infrastructure to power it. Installing a new transformer "demands a huge investment cost of around 35.9 million Br."

The Company is exploring alternative solutions to meet the power requirement and push production past the limits of its ageing equipment.

The weight and size of individual pieces caused another disadvantage against competitors that use standardised measurements. Leulseged put it down to "the ineffectiveness” of the old multi-head weighers and check-weighers (DBAO) machine, which is responsible for determining the weight and size of the candy.

Production experts expect between 180 and 200 pieces of candy in a one-kilogram candy package. But due to the old machine’s ineffectiveness, the weight and size of individual candy pieces dropped to 156 a kilogram. The standard weight of a single Desta Candy was close to five grams, but later the average weight increased to eight grams.

When retailers buy Desta Candy by the kilogram, they cannot find the expected number of pieces.

“This has caused a major problem for retailers," Leulseged told Fortune.

For a brand built on nostalgia and national recognition, the return has exposed a deeper industrial problem. The popularity of Desta Candy survived its years away from the market, but rebuilding the production system behind it will take more than the demand from shoppers who remember it.

The experience mirrors a wider difficulty in the domestic manufacturing sector, where established brands with strong recognition often rest on ageing infrastructure, small capital investment and fragile supply chains.

Whether Desta Candy endures depends less on the memory of its flavours than on whether the machinery, energy and supply networks behind them can keep pace with the market.

Not everyone is convinced by the plan to try.

Dakito Alemu (PhD), an accounting professor and capital markets lecturer at Addis Abeba University (AAU), has called the feasibility document “flawed and overly optimistic,” reading more like a "PowerPoint pitch" than a study, and “impossible to audit independently as it stands.’

“It fails to set basic benchmarks for consumer behaviour and sales forecasting,” he told Fortune. “It also omits essential technical detail, most of all the source of the production machinery.”

Dakito considers the production machine’s capacity and efficiency critical to determining whether the project is viable at all.

He found the study lacking the technical detail a full audit would require, calling the proposal "top-optimistic" rather than a rigorously supported feasibility study.

He argued that the methodology carries fundamental financial errors. The payback period and Net Present Value (NPV) calculations “depart from standard practice because the authors used accounting profit in the denominator rather than operating cash flow, misrepresenting how much cash the project actually generates.”

He also disputed the market assumptions, calling the projected 46pc market share "unrealistic."

“The model appears to assume that competitors will weaken as the project expands, a scenario that overlooks their likely responses and the broader dynamics of the market,” he told Fortune.

Dakito questioned the brand's relevance, too. The "Desta" name has been inactive for 12 to 14 years, and because the product is age-sensitive, much of its original consumer base has aged out.

“Rebuilding recognition would take marketing investment that the document doesn’t account for,” he said.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 12,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1367]