President John Dramani Mahama has commissioned Ghana’s first domestically produced pasta facility, a US$40 million plant built by agribusiness company Olam Agri at Kpone near Tema, marking what the president described as a deliberate shift from import dependence toward industrial self-sufficiency.
The plant, inaugurated on Thursday, March 5, has a projected annual production capacity of 43,000 tonnes and is expected to create 200 new direct jobs, in addition to the 300 workers already employed at Olam Agri’s existing flour mill on the same site. The facility will process locally milled wheat flour into finished pasta products for the domestic market, eliminating the need to import the final product from countries including Turkey, Italy, China, and South Africa, which have historically supplied Ghana’s pasta demand.
The commissioning fulfils a commitment made during President Mahama’s state visit to Singapore in August 2025, where Olam Agri co-founder and Group Chief Executive Officer Sunny Verghese pledged the plant would be ready before mid-2026. The visit yielded a broader US$200 million Olam investment commitment spanning pasta production, poultry feed, and aquaculture feed, which officials estimated could generate approximately 4,000 direct and indirect jobs across all phases.
Mahama said the project reflects what is achievable when private investment aligns with national development priorities. He noted that Olam Agri has operated in Ghana for 32 years, expanding from commodity trading into wheat milling, cocoa, cashew, biscuits, and tomato processing, and currently employs more than 4,500 Ghanaians directly and indirectly.
The president announced that the new plant qualifies under the government’s 24-Hour Economy Policy and will operate on a shift system. He confirmed that companies registering under the initiative will be eligible for duty-free imports of industrial and factory equipment, an incentive he described as a direct signal to manufacturers that the government is willing to reduce the cost of expanding production capacity.
The investment builds on the foundation established in 2012 when former President John Evans Atta Mills inaugurated Olam Agri’s US$55 million wheat milling facility in Tema, which ended Ghana’s heavy reliance on imported wheat flour. Today’s commissioning extends that value chain one step further, converting locally milled flour into a finished consumer product for the first time on Ghanaian soil.
