Zimbabwe company eyes sugar exports to China
HARARE - Zimbabwe’s top sugar company said Friday that it plans to start exporting to China in the next three years. Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe is keen to explore trade opportunities in the Chinese market, managing director Aiden Mhere said.
“We very much would like to export sugar to China. We have received quite a lot of enquiries,” Mhere said in response to a Xinhua question during a media engagement event.
He said since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, shipping and freight costs had risen significantly, and that his company is still trying to reach full production capacity.
“As we ramp our capacity utilisation to 100% (currently we are around 70-75%), we should be able to have a significant surplus to export to China at competitive costs,” Mhere said. “We are looking forward to exporting to our allweather friend China.”
He said the company hopes to reach full capacity in sugar production in the next three years.
The sugar industry is aspiring to increase its contribution to the country’s gross domestic product to 5% by 2030, as it used to do in the past, Mhere said.
Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe already exports sugar to Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, the European Union and the United States.
Irrigating 46,000 hectares of sugarcane in Zimbabwe’s Lowveld, the company operates two sugar mills, Hippo Valley Estates and Triangle Limited, which can produce over 600,000 tonnes of sugar a year.
The company also operates an ethanol plant at Triangle, with an annual capacity of 41 million litres.
Sixty percent of the sugar produced by Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe is consumed locally, while the rest is exported, Mhere said.