HARARE: Zimbabwe’s biggest sugar refiner Starafrica Corporation said Friday it is accumulating stock piles of white sugar due to subdued demand on the market at a time the company had increased production following acquisition of new plant.
The company last year doubled sugar production capacity after acquiring the new plant from India.
General Manager Marvellous Sibanda was quoted by state news agency New Ziana as saying that stocks were piling up at its storage facility due to reduced consumer demand owing to tight liquidity conditions prevailing in the country.
“There has been a huge gap between our production and market uptake because what we have seen is that we are producing more while consumers are not buying white sugar, forcing the Corporation to pile stocks,” he said.
The company, however, was working towards penetrating the regional market to export excess sugar, Sibanda said. About 70 percent of the company’s sugar output is taken by beverage manufacturing companies.
The new plant has capacity to produce 600 tonnes of sugar per day but is currently producing 300 tonnes, which the market is failing to consume.
South Africa is the largest sugar producer in Africa with 2.4 million tonnes annually compared to Zimbabwe’s 600,000 tonnes.
