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.