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CIP • SOCIAL SCIENCES WORKING PAPER 2010-1
In Tanzania, except for the cold store chain operating for Bright Choice Company in handling
imported food items, including frozen chips, none of the interviewed retail outlets and
households had cold store chain in operation. Bright Choice Company, the only importer of
frozen chips to Tanzania, has a well-established cold chain facility, including refrigerated cars and
insulated vans for short distance delivery of their products.
In the case of Burundi, hotels have refrigerators but the majority of them don’t store fresh chips
because they prepare for immediate consumption on order. Hotels of very high class have cold
rooms, but they don’t store potato chips. Some bars and restaurants of high class have cold
chambers.
4.5.7 Transportation chain for chips
Refrigerated transport services are vital especially for perishable commodities such as potato
chips. In all the ECA countries, they use refrigerated transport services for chips from ports or
points of supply to points of distribution.
In the case of Ethiopia, the company that imports frozen chips from Europe is the only enterprise
that has refrigerated facility to transport frozen chips from the port of Djibouti to Addis Ababa.
In Kenya, transport services are available through road networks, railways, air freights and ports.
Kenya Railways has specialized facilities which could handle frozen chips including mechanically
refrigerated bogies and iced perishable wagon.
In Tanzania, Bright Choice uses ship (shipping agent: MAERSK SEALAND), vans and cars (all
refrigerated) for transportation of frozen chips. Frozen chips come from South Africa by ship in
refrigerated containers. At Mombassa and or Dar es Salaam ports, the product is taken in
refrigerated trucks to the company yards where the product is stored in refrigerated chambers.
Refrigerated vans and or cars distribute the frozen chips to customers.
In Rwanda and Burundi, there is no demand for refrigerated transport service since there is no
import of frozen chips.
4.5.8 Credit facilities in ECA countries
Despite the fact that all the retail outlets have access to credit services in Ethiopia, only 32% of
them had taken credit either to construct new hotels or re-habilitate existing ones. The main
sources of credit for the hotels are banks. Other retail outlets did not take credit because they had
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