Banana beverage lovers will, beginning mid-2017, start enjoying high quality products from a factory being set up in Mwurire Sector in the Eastern Province’s Rwamagana District.

According to the Director General for National Industrial Research and Development Agency (NIRDA), Dr. Joseph Mungarurire, construction works for the factory estimated to cost $1.5 million, started in March, 2016 and its first phase has been completed. It is expected to start production in May, 2017.

The factory will have a daily production capacity of at least 330ml 5,000 bottles but with possibility to increase production.

"Depending on people’s demand for its products it can increase production from say 5,000 bottles to 10,000,” he said.

The factory is a joint venture between the government of and a association of banana juice and alcoholic beverages makers (APPROJUBAAR).

According to Juvenal Ndayisenga, the president of APPROJUB AAR, the factory will be making an alcoholic banana drink locally called ‘Urwagwa’ and juice.

Ndayisenga told The New Times that ‘Urwagwa’ will consist of three products; ‘Inkangaza’, a banana beer made with honey; ‘Butunda’, pure banana beer with no water added, and a diluted banana beer.

"We have maintained the name ‘Urwagwa’ to preserve the Made-in-Rwanda products. You can make traditional products with modern technologies to meet standards and hygiene,” he said.

"In the traditional era, banana was about drinking and enjoying; but now, we are producing for the market,” Ndayisenga added.

NIRDA’s Mungarurire said that the factory will also be making banana pulp which those who want to make wine can buy and use. Pulp is the soft moist part of a fruit, such as the succulent fleshy tissue of a banana.

The officials said that they want to produce beverages that meet international standards and are not only targeting the local market, but also the international one.

"We want to make high quality products which we can export. There are foreigners who tell us that if we make well packaged quality beer with hygiene assurance, there is a ready market,” Mungarurire said.

Currently, Ndayisenga said, there were 89 formal banana beverage makers while those who are in the business informally - not registered in Rwanda Development Board (RDB) - total over 400 whose products "… are substandard as they us rudimentary technologies.”

"That factory will play a role in helping those in the informal sector to graduate into formal one by helping them enhance the quality of their products. It will contribute to the country’s economic growth because banana beer is a popular drink and bananas are grown everywhere in the country,” he said.

Plastic bottle production section

Another advantage, according to Ndayisenga, is that the factory will have a section reserved to produce plastic bottles for packaging purposes, noting that its production capacity will be 1,200 bottles per hour.

"They will be getting the bottles at a low price compared to imported ones from Uganda or Kenya,” he said.

The Rwamagana District Agricultural Officer, Innocent Ukizuru, said the average banana production in Rwamagana was an average of 24 tonnes per hectare annually and it is grown on about 16,000 hectares in the district, amounting to 384,000 tonnes.

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