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Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
UNITED Refineries Botswana (URB) is set on exporting cooking oil to Zimbabwe, increasing the number of foreign firms anticipating to grab a niche in the market.
According to media reports from Botswana, URB, which recently opened a multi-million pula cooking oil refinery plant in Francistown has sought approval from the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) to export three million litres of cooking oil per month into the country.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Mr Busisa Moyo who is also the United Refineries Limited chief executive officer said there was growing interest from a number of regional players to explore the country’s cooking oil market as well as to channel investment into the sector.
“URB and many other players in South Africa are very keen to play in the Zimbabwean cooking oil market as their own markets are saturated,” said Mr Moyo.
Botswana consumes a minimum of one million litres of cooking oil most of which is imported from South Africa and the setting up the new plant by URB has led to the saturation of the market in that country.
URB is a 100 percent citizen owned company. The company was incorporated in January 2010 with the objective of providing affordable high quality edible vegetable oils using current technologies and systems that optimise efficiency. The mandate of the company is to procure, refine and distribute vegetable oil in Botswana, with particular interest in the Botswana market and also the export market in countries in the Sadc region.
“There is now excess capacity for cooking oil in Zimbabwe with Willowton coming into the market soon after another global giant Wilmar Oils bought into Surface in Chitungwiza and National Foods re-entered the cooking oil space through its 40 percent acquisition in Pure Oils and Elangeni Oil partnered URL to strengthen its operational capacity. The sector is stronger than ever with a capacity of 15 000 metric tonnes per month against demand of 10 000 metric tonnes,” said Mr Moyo.
He said the country’s cooking oil sector was faced with a myriad of challenges chief among them being shortage of adequate raw material.
“The key challenge for the sector has been raw material sourcing as the country is going through liquidity challenges. We are working together with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to ensure we manage the liquidity and secondly to embark on long-term strategies of crop growing and soya bean being primary production, working with Government, banks and farmers. The sector needs 300 000 metric tonnes of soya beans annually to completely wean itself from import dependence for raw materials,” said Mr Moyo.
@DNsingo
Online Reporter