Hafun Salt Factory was the biggest salt factory in the world during the 1930s. It was created in the area of actual Hafun by the Italians in northern Italian Somalia. In 1941 it was destroyed during WWII's British conquest of Italian East Africa.
History
Soon after the First World War, the Italians realized that the shallow bay of Hafun, which had a long, low beach along the mainland side, was a perfect place for a large salt works. The "Società Saline e Industrie della Somalia Settentrionale" built on both sides of the peninsula of Ras Hafun (Hafun and Hurdiyo) what would be the largest salt-works in the world. The firm, constituted in Milan in 1922, rebuilt a town for 5,000 inhabitants in what was ancient Hafun and called it with the name "Dante". Construction began in 1922 and was completed by 1929. In 1931, production began at the salt factory and soon the enterprise at Ras Hafun was exporting by sea over three hundred thousand tons of salt a year for industrial use. In 1941, during World War II, the British, who had lost British Somaliland to an Italian attack, sent north into Somalia from Kenya an expeditionary force that captured all of Italian East Africa and in the process destroyed the salt works.Wikimapia[1]
In 1930, an Italian firm called Società Saline e Industrie della Migiurtina invested huge capital to exploit salt deposits in Hafun and Hurdiyo. The "Hafun Salt Factory" was created and was the main producing facility of sea salt on the world in the 1930s. By 1933-34, the Hafun salt works were producing more than 200,000 metric tons of salt, most of which was exported to India & the Far East.[2]
The British destroyed the salt factory in 1941 during their conquest of Italian Somalia and since then the productivity has been reduced to a minimal activity until the 1950s, when was totally abandoned.
In late 2014, the Udug Ltd. company in conjunction with the US-based Redd Engineering consultancy firm began conducting feasibility studies for the renovation of the salt production plants in Hafun and Hurdiyo. The first phase of the initiative was completed in March 2015, and saw the historic salt works in both towns refurbished following community-wide consultations. "Redd Engineering" official Lowry Redd indicated that the initiative aims to make the Hafun plant again one of the main global suppliers of salt.[3]
Notes
- ^ Facility history & map
- ^ Ahmed, Ahmed Abbas. "Transformation Towards a Regulated Economy": 74.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help); Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ "Somalia salt industry revives". Garowe Online.