SA sugar company pump US$19m into Zimbabwe
By KING SHANGO
Published on: 1st September, 2009
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ZIMBABWE – HARARE – South African company Tongaat Hulett Ltd., the sugar company part-owned by Anglo American Plc, is pumping R150m million (US$19 million) into Zimbabwe to double sugar production in the lowveld.
Peter Staude, Tongaat Huellett group chief executive, said in a financial statement Monday the company was encouraged with the formation of the inclusive government and the adoption of the US dollar and the rand as official tender.
Staude said the company was eager to boost production from the current 298,000 metric tons to 600,000 tons, which is the installed capacity.
The company runs Mkwasine through its Zimbabwean subsidiary, Hippo Valley Estates, while Tongaat is represented through a local subsidiary, Triangle Ltd.
All three vast sugar plantations are tucked away in Zimbabwe’s south-eastern Lowveld.
“About R70-million would be spent on Tongaat Hulett’s two mills in Zimbabwe to ensure that they could ramp up to full capacity, while a further R75-million would be spent on upgrading the firm’s transport fleet, which transported sugar cane to the mills,” Stade said.
Further, the firm was aiming to produce the yields from its own estates in Zimbabwe over the next two to three years, which would enable it to get all its sugar cane from its own estate.
However, it was also continuing to work with outgrowers’ estates, which it was hoping to assist in re-establishing within the next three to four years.
Staude said that the firm’s biggest focus in the short term was to increase production back to the operation’s capacity, up from the little under 300,000 tons it was expected to produce in 2009.
However, in the medium term, Tongaat Hulett was exploring the further uppgrade of the two mills to 820,000 tons per year.
