GE and FieldCore restart power production at Ethiopian sugar factory in 20 days

• 6 years ago (2018-03-28)
• David Flin

Africa 320 Gas engine plant 64

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GE and FieldCore, the company’s independent field services execution arm, have successfully restarted Metahara Sugar Factory in Ethiopia, seven months after the plant was severely damaged by a major thunderstorm. The outage execution service if two steam turbines took 20 days.

Fahmi Dawud, Deputy Factory Manager at the Metahara Sugar Factory, said that the team that got the plant operating in just 20 days was an amazing achievement. He said: “We had lost all hope that these extremely aged units, manufactured by Compagnie Electro Mecanique in the 1950s, would ever come online again due to the extensive damage. Hotels and supermarkets had run out of sugar, and it was a critical situation. We are excited to hear the machines humming again.”

The Metahara Sugar Factory is located in the Oromiya Regional State, about 200 km from Addis Ababa. It produces about 136,000 tons of sugar annually, an estimated 20 per cent of Ethiopia’s sugar consumption.