Value-add products, timber exporters urged
HARARE - Timber exporters should strive to value-add their products to optimise foreign exchange earnings, national trade promotion body, ZimTrade, has revealed.
ZimTrade said local firms should ensure that the bulk of their timber exports is value-added to enhance demand in the export markets.
Most of the local industrial plantations produce sawn timber, veneer, plywood, fibreboard, pulp and paper, doors furniture, and engineered blocks.
A large percentage of the sawn timber output and timber-related products are exported to regional and international markets.
The growth of the domestic timber industry growth has lately been spurred by growing regional demand, stimulated by the booming construction industry in developing Southern African countries. Observers say this has the potential to drive growth in timber production in Zimbabwe.
At its peak in 2001, Zimbabwe exported timber products worth about $137 million and now intends to increase sales in the short to medium term.
According
Food and to an assessment by the Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an arm of the United Nations, the forestry industry contributes about three percent to the country’s gross domestic product.
Trade Map shows that Zimbabwe’s exports of wood (sawn or chipped lengthwise) in 2020 were US$6.4 million, which was an increase of 18.5 percent from 2019 US$5.4 million.
In 2020 Botswana was the largest importer of Zimbabwe wood products taking up to US$5.1 million worth of products.
Other countries that imported Zimbabwe’s wood (sawn or chipped lengthwise) include South Africa which imported US$1.1 million and Zambia US$244, 000.
In 2020, Zimbabwe’s total wood products and articles of wood exports totaled US$15.6 million and the largest importers were Botswana at US$5.5 million, Zambia US$3.9 million, South Africa US$3.2 million, while Mozambique imported US$2.9 million worth of the wood products.
Zimbabwe boasts of abundant timber resources with high-quality hardwoods such as teak, pine and mukwa, and bark extract which has a ready market in the region and other Asian markets for leather tanning.
MAPUTO - After a seven-week voyage, Africa’s first-ever deep-sea floating Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facility has entered Mozambican waters, marking a major milestone ahead of imminent production from an offshore gas field.
The floating plant - known as the Coral Sul FLNG – ar rived in Area 4 of the Rovuma Basin this week, Mozambique’s National Petroleum Institute announced.
The plant is critical to the $7 billion Coral South project, which is operated by Italian oil and gas company Eni. It will produce and sell gas extracted from the southern part of the field.
The 220, 000 ton vessel, the main component of which was constructed by Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, is the first FLNG built for deep waters and the first specifically built for Africa. Some 432 meters long and 66 meters wide, the plant has the capacity to liquefy 3.4 million tons of natural gas per year. It will be linked to six subsea gas producing wells, with its LNG earmarked to be sold exclusively to BP under a 20-year offtake agreement signed in 2016.
Eni’s partners in Area 4 are ExxonMobil,
National Petroleum Corporation, Empresa de Hidrocarbonetos, Galp Energia, and the
Corporation.
The Coral Sul FLNG embarked on its voyage from South Korea on November 15 and entered Mozambican waters on January 3.
According to the National Petroleum Institute, the vessel’s arrival is “a milestone in the project’s implementation.”
Since arriving in Mozambican waters, a complex process of anchoring, surveys, inspections and certifications had begun with a view to issuing the vessel with an operating license so that production can start as planned in the second half of the year. the China Nactional Korea Gas