The country’s sugar industry is set to record production between 421 000 tonnes and 440 000 tonnes in the 2017/18 season.
ZIMBABWE’S sugar output is expected to reach 570 000 tonnes in the 2018/19 season, 90 percent of the country’s installed capacity, following good rains and the recent completion of the Tokwe-Mukosi dam, industry figures show.
The country’s sugar industry is set to record production between 421 000 tonnes and 440 000 tonnes in the 2017/18 season, down from 454 000 tonnes registered in the previous year. This is due to reduced irrigation in drought-hit 2016, according to South Africa’s Tongaat Hullet, which owns Zimbabwe’s two main sugar producers — Hippo Valley Estates and Triangle Estates.
The two estates account for about 80 percent of the country’s sugar output, with the balance coming from private commercial and small-scale producers.
“The current dam levels following the good rains received at the end of 2016 into 2017 will provide full irrigation during 2017/18, leading to a significant crop recovery by 2018/19. Sugar production is expected to progressively recover over the coming two years, to between some 525 000 and 570 00 tonnes by 2018/19,” Hippo Valley said in a statement accompanying its financial results last week.
The Zimbabwe operations contributed 43 percent to Tongaat Hullet’s sugar production of 1 056 million tonnes reported in the full year to March 2017.
Zimbabwe’s sugar production has recovered from the 258 962 tonnes output in 2009/10, which followed the height of the country’s hyperinflation crisis when poor power supplies negatively impacted irrigation.
The country exports sugar to the European Union and regional markets such as Botswana and Namibia.
In the 2016/17 season, Zimbabwe enjoyed sugar export prices that were 20 percent up on the previous year, with raw sugar trading between 14 and 23,8 cents per pound in the year to March 2017.
However, prices have come under pressure from forecasts of a global surplus leading up to September 2018.