Nug Oil Project

Established with a loan of 5 million Birr from the Tsedey Bank, the Noug Edible oil project is one of the great successes of Awra Amba intentional community. It has won plaudits for quality since it gets close to the traditional way of producing that most loved item of cooking oil , The Kiba Noug, which for thousands of years peasant households hand produced and only reserved for special occasions such as weddings, New year and other festivals.

Our Noug oil avoids blending with other cheaper ingredients.

It is pure Noug and we try and use the best variety of Noug produced in places like Simada, West Gondar and others.

Our production technology includes two levels of sieving and sifting using modern machinery (Mabeter) which eliminates a lot of the dusty material, crushed stone, sand, chaff and vegetable remains that gets added in the process of crushing the pods after harvest.

In addition we remove the oil cake through a process of filtration and sedimentation in an oil pit. The oil cake contains  residual oil but also enormous amounts of dust and minute metal particles some of which are harmful to humans. 

In addition to the oil cake we also extract the seed cover (Faggulo) which could be used as an ingredient for animal feed. We get some 40% by weight of Faggulo from the production which means 24 quintals a day or over 5,000 quintals per year.

Understandably after all these impurities are removed and more settling of the oil is allowed to take place in our large 20,000 liter tanks , the resulting produce is quite wholesome and some of our clients say that they buy it only for medicinal uses .

Many households swear that it is the ideal oil for making doro wot due to its ability to bring out the flavor of the ingredients ( wot yasemal).