Sh350 million slaughter house opened in Nairobi

The fortunes of pastoralists and livestock farmers are set to improve following the opening of a Sh. 350 million state-of-the-art slaughter house in Nairobi’s Baba Dogo area.

The slaughterhouse is expected to provide the much needed market for livestock farmers and pastoralists from the North eastern region.

Speaking during a test run of the facility, Ali Hassan Mohammed, the Livestock Slaughtering Company Limited Manager said that the facility is currently slaughtering 1,000 goats and sheep and 900 cows per day.

The facility whose capacity is 4,500 heads of livestock, is built on a 16-acre piece of land is said to be the biggest in the East and Central Africa.

The slaughterhouse is also expected to provide employment to over 800 Kenyans.

It was the brain child of about 3,000 small scale livestock farmers drawn from Kajiado, Samburu, Isiolo, Narok and Baringo counties.

According to Mohammed, most of the meat from the facility is sold locally with a small percentage being exported to the Middle East.

Mohammed noted that they are banking on the growing demand for meat products in the Middle East, Asia and other markets in Africa to expand their market.

“The company is also looking into exporting our products to European markets once we meet all the stipulated requirements,” he added.

He also pledged to leverage on the new modern facilities and technology to competitively price the meat products.

Constructions for the slaughterhouse were started in 2012 and hope to offer a solution for pastoralists who incur huge losses due to inadequate market for their livestock and dry weather patterns experienced in Northern Kenya.

Slaughterhouses in Kenya are usually run by farmers through cooperatives, with the Kenya Meat Commission being the biggest.