Farm invasions agitate Ariston
Financial Gazette
27/2/2020
Omega Ukama
Senior Staff Writer
LISTED agro-industrial concern, Ariston Holdings (Ariston) says the invasion of its farms has continued to hamper its progress.
The company, which runs five estates across Zimbabwe, has had to contend with multiple cases of intrusion on its farms since the beginning of the fast-track land reform programme in the early 2000s.
“Occurrences of disturbances on farms continue to hamper progress,” the company said last week in a trading update.
“The board and management continue to engage the relevant authorities so as to find a lasting solution to the land issues affecting the group’s assets,” the company added.
Last year, a security guard at Ariston’s Roscommon Estate (Roscommon) in Chimanimani — where the company has been in conflict with villagers over land issues for almost two decades — shot dead a man and injured another in what was confirmed by the police as an altercation involving a land dispute.
In 2002, government gazetted part of Roscommon for redistribution. The company, however, later obtained a court order granting it permission to evict some of the settlers.
Roscommon produces the world-acclaimed niche red tea, wanganella as well as macadamia and potatoes.
In 2010 there were reports that a senior member of the judiciary occupied part of Ariston’s Kent Estate (Kent) in Mashonaland West
The judge reportedly took over 800 hectares of the 4 500-hetare farm.
Kent is a diversified producer of certified seed potatoes and a variety of horticultural crops including all year round tomatoes, pepper, peas and fine beans.
Ariston says the contract poultry production project at Kent is “one of the biggest operations of its kind in Zimbabwe”.
The company also runs Claremont Estate in Nyanga, Clearwater Estate and Southdown Estate in Chipinge.
Claremont Estate is a leading producer of apples, stone fruit, passion fruit and potatoes, while Clearwater Estate has the largest hectarage of mature macadamia orchards in the country, and Southdown Estate is the flag-ship tea producer for Ariston.
Ariston is not the only Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed company that has been disturbed by Zimbabwe’s messy land reform programme.
Border Timbers says its exit from judicial management has been held up by the delay of its compensation from the government, for estates expropriated during the exercise.
In May 2015, the forest estates and saw-milling company was awarded a US$25 million settlement, as an outcome of an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes arbitration on government’s expropriation of its estates, in violation of a Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement between Zimbabwe and Germany.
Peter Bailey, Border Timbers’ judicial manager says “there is currently no clarity around the government’s timetable for settlement”.