Damage Esmeralda Farms Ethiopia in pictures

Esmeralda Farms stops cultivating flowers in Ethiopia. The company was visited by Dutch broadcasting agency NOS, which interviewed the manager of the farm, Haile Seifu. In this broadcast, one can see what's left of the farm.

Intentional
The damage, which general director Loui Hooyman estimated earlier at 10 million euros, is huge. According to Haile Seifu, everything is 'total loss'. The packaging area is destroyed and large parts of the farm are burned down. Even more disturbing is the fact that the catastrophe was brought upon the company intentionally. According to the Dutch newspaper NRC, rebels walked about the farm for hours, destroying and stealing anything they found. Apparently, the smell of chemical substances, poured out all over the place, is unbearable.

The major damage forced Esmeralda Farms to shut down their operations in Ethiopia. As a consequence, 600 people in Ethiopia have lost their job. Also in the Netherlands, 14 people were laid off.

Photo credits: NOS (click here to see the full report, in Dutch)

Next to Esmeralda Farms, other farms were hit by the rebels as well. It is still unknown how many companies have been attacked, but Esmeralda is the farm that was hit hardest. The reason for the unrest is dissatisfaction with government policy.

Long term plans unchanged - Celtic Cooling continues building cold rooms
According to Joost van Klink, general director at Celtic Cooling, it is not expected that the local disturbances of late will withhold other companies from continuing implementing their long term plans. Klink is confident investors will keep coming and this 'war' will not influence the developments of the Ethiopian horticulture sector in the long run. In a press release earlier today, Celtic confidently announced to continue the construction of the largest cold room facility in Africa: a 17,000 square meter cold room in Addis Ababa.

Below: photos of the new coldroom under construction of Celtic Cooling at the airport in Addis Ababa. It can contain up to 600,000 tons of cargo. From there, flowers, vegetables and to a lesser extent fruit will be shipped out to places all over the world. It is planned to be finished in May 2017.

Photo credits: NOS (click here to see the full report, in Dutch)