Fertilizer manufacturer suspends operations
By Lance Guma
28 April 2011
Zimbabwe’s sole manufacturer of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, Sable Chemical
Industries Ltd, has been forced to suspend operations after the Zimbabwe
Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) cut off power over a US$30 million debt.
A report by NewsDay says most of the workers have now been sent home as a
result. Electricity to the struggling company was cut off during the Easter
Holiday and had still not been connected by Wednesday, the report said. It’s
the second time since January this year that power has been cut off over the
ballooning debt.
Speaking to NewsDay, Sable Chemicals deputy board chairman Misheck Kachere
said the company presented a payment plan to ZESA which it had been
following for some time, until it later defaulted owing to cash flow
challenges.
In September 2009 the company shut down owing to what it called high
electricity tariffs and their impact on running the Electrolysis Plant.
Several meetings with ZESA management to revise the tariffs yielded nothing.
At the time ZESA argued that customers like Sable actually paid a lower
tariff of US5,6 cents while the rest of the industry paid US7,3 cents for
the same unit of electricity.