So we have bread…
In Havana the Cuban chain of bread is searching for alternatives and innovation that help overcome current limitations.
Wennys Díaz Ballaga | internet@granma.cu
February, 2026
Evaluation of solar panel installation geared at providing energy for bread making machines and furnaces. Picture: Wennys Díaz Ballaga.
Lack of fuel and blackouts have tested the Havana Net of bakeries. To overcome these limitations a number of strategies have been implemented with the goal of ensuring flour supply using electrical transportation, but also the conversion of furnaces to new technologies.
«The blockade of fuel has been very challenging because most of our furnaces depend of oil», explains Maruan Fee Fernández, general director of the Cuban Chain for Bread in Havana, when discussing the complex scenario they face in ensuring access of bread to the people.
Because of their dependency on fossil fuels, they have suffered during the last few months because the electrogenic groups have been seriously affected by blackouts impacting the entire country. Prior to that «we had to reinvent ourselves».
One of the main innovations was furnace conversion technology. «We are transforming diesel furnaces to gas», a measure that applies to bakeries in the municipalities of Playa, Plaza, Centro Havana, Old Havana, Marianao, among others.
This transformation will make it possible to maintain production 24 hours a day, and make partially independent the baking of bread from the availability of electricity -other equipment essential in bread making are still electricity dependent.
The director also mentions other projects being developed: «We are planning on working with pellet technology from Spain, where Wood sawdust is processed and used as fuel».
We are also evaluating the installation of solar panel technology in about 50 percent of the bakeries that would make it possible to use solar energy in place of electricity in equipment still dependent on electricity generated by fossil fuels.
INNOVATION BORN FROM THE BLOCKADE
About the project of technological transformation, Rigoberto Hernández de la Rosa, director of Production-Commercialization explains this initiative will make it possible for them to sustain sales during blackouts, becoming a path towards energy autonomy of the bread baking process.
«Eliminating diesel and working with manufactured gas, which is a national product, we lower diesel imports and become able to provide a better and extended service to our population, and one without interruptions», he explained.
The idea is in sync with our government directives, protecting food production when our country confronts an energy blockade and an economic war imposed by the US government.
The first step of this Project is mounting burners able to work with manufactured gas. «In our firm we have until now 17 units where this transformation can be implemented during this month and beginning of next one, so these bakeries are transformed and functioning.
The Minister of Food Industries Alberto López Díaz has corroborated this information during his visit to bakeries of Línea, 12 and Carlos III, where he learnt not only about this transformation but also about the strategy used to ensure flour supply to all the establishments of the Cuban Chain of Bread in Havana.
«To serve 15 municipalities implies transporting raw materials to each, which is complex. We implemented supply centers and rented private tricycles to deliver flour from the mills to some of the bakeries», explained Fee Fernández, all part of the effort to stabilize services. And yet, we have still been able to ensure delivery to municipalities of the periphery with our own trucks.
In all the visited installations the directive was to generate projects to ensure the installation of renewable energies for processes today requiring electricity. This directive aligns with projects developed and in development by the Cuban Chain for Bread, projecting the use of solar panels in at least half of its bakeries. The Cuban Chain for Bread has today 51 bakeries in Havana, of which 47 are functioning at this time and the rest are not as they are being transformed and maintained. The Cuban Chain for Bread follows a management model by which 90 percent of production is cooperative following non-statal formats of management, explained the general director.
About prices, Fee Fernández assured us that they have been stable and without variation since last year. The 200 grams bread produced is the one with highest demand, and it is commercialized at 120 pesos. «We try to avoid increasing prices, even though it also depends on market fluctuations».
Havana demonstrates that tightening the blockade and economic war can be confronted with inventiveness and commitment of workers in the bread baking sector to ensure that bread continues to arrive everyday to home in our capital city.
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