Nine months ago, the Brasserie du Benin (BB Lomé) signed a partnership agreement with the network of ESOP Rice Togo represented by ESOP Rice Notsè for the purchase of 1080 tons of annual rice for the manufacture of PILS beer.
On 18 October 2017, a mid-term assessment was conducted (after 3 months of contract); the results were more than encouraging:

– Overall paddy rice production doubled in 2017 compared to 2016: from 4,000 tons to 8,000 tons.
– 1300 jobs were created: the ESOPs have registered more than 1000 additional farmers and 250 direct jobs in the processing plants without counting the increase of the labor force and the transport.
Nevertheless, difficulties were encountered by the ESOPs, particularly with regard to water and storage. The lack of irrigation hinders farmers as they can only harvest once a year. As a result, all annual production must be stored under the ideal conditions required by a food industry that meets international standards such as BB.

Thus, on Friday, March 16, 2018, a meeting was held at Notsè on ESOP RizNotse’s premises between BB Lomé, Manager of ESOP RizNotsè, Manager of ETD, Minister of Industry and the representative of the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.
This meeting of March 16 was intended to visit the land that ESOP RizNotsè bought for the construction of its new building and the official launch of the start of the construction of the building. A call for tenders were launched for this purpose.

The BB therefore supports the network of Togo’s ESOP Rice in their national and international development because the medium-term vision is to increase the rice supply of the BB Lomé by the ESOPs. The BB has thus supported the construction of 2 storage warehouses on the site of ESOP Notsè in order to obtain good raw materials on the one hand and finished products on the other hand. The BB will also support ETD for technical training for producers to strengthen the quality approach and adoption of environmentally friendly practices (innovative production techniques, securing the supply of quality certified inputs) …).

These activities should allow:
– improve storage conditions for rice
– increase storage capacity in international standards;
– reduce production costs and thus increase producers’ incomes in a sustainable manner by increasing the volume of rice harvested and sold to ESOPs.

The BB hopes that the network of ESOP Rice will be able to achieve an increase in rice production and sales of 25% in 2018 and 33% in 2019.

The meeting ended around 13h in an atmosphere of satisfaction.