Busisa Moyo
Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
UNITED Refineries Limited (URL) has successfully completed a pilot project for a $2 million soya bean contract farming initiative. The company’s chief executive officer, Busisa Moyo, told Chronicle Business that his company would in the next farming season engage farmers in Jotsholo and Lupane for soya contract farming.
“We’ve successfully completed the pilot project for soya contract farming with farmers in Matabeleland North. The farmers are busy harvesting and we hope that this farming season we’ll roll out the contract farming project with the farmers,” he said.
In 2014, the Bulawayo-based agro-processing firm announced the setting aside of $2 million for soya bean contract farming. The contract farming project is aimed at improving the supply of soya bean, one of URL’s critical raw materials.
The firm, which is Zimbabwe’s second largest cooking oil refiner, needs 96,000 tonnes of oil seed annually but can only access about 50 percent of that locally. United Refineries has a refining capacity of 8,000 metric tonnes of oil seed per month.
Through its contract farming project, URL intends to put between five and 10 hectares under soya bean. Due to shortage of raw materials on the local market, a number of agro-processing companies are importing critical raw materials, a development that has also increased the cost of production locally.
Despite the challenges facing agro-processors, some companies particularly the oil expressers, have now increased their capacity to about 85 percent with others mulling penetrating the export market.
Recently, the Government, through the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, announced the removal of the open import general licence on cooking oil, a move that has seen some foreign companies in the oil industry considering plans to set up plants locally.
The Oil Expressers’ Association of Zimbabwe is on record as saying its members have a capacity of over 12,000 tonnes per month of cooking oil while local demand is estimated at 10,000 tonnes per month. Over the years, Zimbabwe has been importing $220 million worth of cooking oil annually on the back of low capacity utilisation in the sector.