food Marketing - Technology 4/2023

Marketing
Pioneering Project: Producing Milk in
Mauritania
Krones has designed and built a turnkey dairy for the Mauritanian company Enazaha. Krones set up a turnkey
dairy, a Mauritanian importer/exporter, in the capital Nouakchott. The entire process technology required to
make milk by recombining powdered milk and milk fat is an essential element of this greenfield project.
People in Mauritania like milk. It’s a drink
with a long tradition in the country’s
nomadic culture, and consumption of
milk and dairy products is currently
gaining even more in importance.
However, the climatic conditions in the
desert state hardly permit dairy farming.
At present, four dairies in Mauritania
produce fresh milk with a shelf-life of just
one week, which means it can only be
used to meet demand in the capital itself,
with its roughly one million inhabitants.
That is why the country in the northwest
of Africa has so far imported most of
its UHT milk and dairy products from
Europe, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In order
to reduce its dependencies, Enazaha
has now started to process and fill UHT
milk, evaporated milk and drinking
yoghurt. Powdered milk and milk fat are
both imported.
Milk importer turns into milk
producer
Enazaha is headquartered in Nouakchott
and has been active in the fields of
import, export and sales of foods and
drinks for more than 30 years now. The
company has specialized in importing
rice, tea, edible oil, milk and beverages. It
operates several branches in Mauritania
that supply the whole of the country with
a good number of its own food and drink
brands. For its export business, Enazaha
runs offices abroad, for example in the
neighboring countries Senegal and Mali.
Under the privately owned company’s
new business plan, powdered milk and
milk fat are to be bought on the world
market, imported and processed in its
own dairy to make UHT milk, evaporated
milk and drinking yoghurt. The aim is to
sell these products on the domestic
market and to also export them.
The two-stage homogenizer achieves pressures of up to 250 bar and is able to process the products
either in the standard way or aseptically.
“Building our own dairy, that was a big
step for Enazaha, taking the plunge from
an importer to a producer,” explains
Cheikh Ahmed Mohamed El Moustapha,
who has been the manager in charge
of the construction project since 2021.
Enazaha had already completed a few
relatively small food-production projects
before, like a biscuit factory or their own
rice plantation, but this was an entirely
different order of magnitude. “The
market will now be watching our project
with eagle eyes. If we’re successful – and
we’re firmly convinced we will be – similar
projects will doubtless follow in our
country,” says Cheikh Ahmed Mohamed
El Moustapha. Previous attempts made
by competitors to produce UHT milk in
Mauritania on a smaller scale had failed.
Mauritania has a population of just
under five million people and except
for a strip of savannah along the coast
essentially consists of desert, so the
country is not in a position to produce
a sufficient amount of milk from dairy
herds itself. Thus, this project also
serves to provide more independence
and boost the economy of Mauritania,
which is still ranked among the world’s
poorest countries. That is why the
German federal government supported
this project.
A greenfield project handled by
Krones Middle East
Krones Middle East drew up the plan
for the greenfield project in meticulous
detail andww then translated it into
hands-on reality. “Our decision to opt
46 food Marketing & Technology • August 2023