Mt Meru invest US$30 million in the Zambian economy
By
MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA
MOUNT Meru Millers (Z) Limited (MMML) has invested
about US$30 million to establish an edible oil manufacturing in
Katuba, one of the largest factories of its kind in the region.
And the company will procure grains worth US$35
million from the farmers from April to September this year.
MMML managing director Himanshu Shah said the company
pumped in about US$4 million to
setup a high protein cotton seed processing plant for cooking oil, the first-ever
to be constructed in Zambia and the second in the region.
Mr Shah said the company was expanding its refinery
at the cost of about US$ 2.5 million which would enable it to do the
fractionation of crude palm oils.
In an interview in Katuba, Mr Shah said once the
fractionation plant was completed, the company would be able to process the
crude palm oil in Zambia.
Mr Shah said currently, no manufacturing company was
able to process crude palm oil apart from Gourock industries saying once
completed it would be another one of its kind in the country.
“We are expanding our refinery and currently our
refinery can do soya, cotton and sunflower seed oils and now we are expanding
it to do the fractionation of crude palm oil.
Right now we can’t do crude palm oil, it is only Gourock
industries which is a global industry and crude palm oil which is 50 per cent of
the oil consumption of Zambia,” he said.
Mr Shah said MMML was repositioning itself to tap
into the palm oil industry by putting in place a fractionation plant in Zambia.
He said its flagship plant in Katuba was a practical
example of value-addition through agro-
processing.
Mr Shah said from May, 2014 to April 2015 the firm
would crush around 60,000 tonnes of soya beans seeds of which 95 per cent had
already been procured.
“We have plans to crush 15,000 tonnes of cotton seeds
and 5,000 tonnes of sunflower seeds and this is our plan for this year,” he
said.
Mr Shah said this year the company had projected to crush
a total of 80, 000 tonnes of the edible oils.
He said plans are underway to construct 36,000
tonnes storage silos which would be completed in the next 10 months.
“We will be putting up three silos that will carry
up to 36,000 tonnes of soya beans and the foundation process has started which
is expected to be completed in the next 10 months and this will be the biggest
silos in Zambia,” he said.
Mr Shah said it was important to point out that the
company was buying 100 per cent of the cotton and sunflower from the
smallholder farmers and 95 per cent of the soya beans from the commercial
farmers.
“We are currently doing trials in sunflower and our
aim is to promote the production of sunflower in Zambia. We have factories in
Uganda and Tanzania and the plants are running at 100 per cent on sunflower,”
Mr Shah said.
To date, the company has created over 400 jobs for
the local people in Katuba area.
