malvernmugadzikwa
Business Writer
A citrus production firm, Top pick Investments, has embarked on a massive project at its Zhovhe Farm 83km west of Beitbridge town and the organisation is set to plant 277 000 orange trees by the end of next year.
The company has so far planted 110 800 orange trees of Ben Valencia, Midnight, and Teddy variety on 400 hectares, with land preparations already underway on another 200 hectares.
Zhovhe Farm manager, Mthulisi Sibanda, said they were targeting to plant oranges on at least 1000 hectares by the end of next year.
He said they had since constructed a 9 km by 500 mm pipeline to boost the new citrus farming and horticulture projects at the farm.
“We are hard at work on the ground and in the last 10 months we managed to plant 110 800 orange trees on 400 hectares,” said Sibanda.
“At the moment, we are working on land preparations on another 200 hectares and we expect to have imported 60 000 propagating seed from South Africa by the end of April.
In our nursery we are currently having 10 000 trees. The citrus propagating material is being imported in batches from South Africa”.
He said the new pipeline from Zhovhe Dam was meant to boost irrigation development at the high integrated farm, which has horticulture crops, livestock, and fisheries production.
Sibanda said they had decided to venture into citrus production which has high returns on both the local and the export market.
He said they were also working on the final stage of installing a micro jet citrus irrigation system.
“We expect to start harvesting the oranges within the next three or four years and increase production. The Midnight and Teddy variety ripe fast.
You will note that our farm is located in an area where climatic conditions are conducive for citrus production,” said Sibanda.
Since the organisation started operating in the area in 2015, they have acquired 17 irrigation pivots to enhance crop production throughout the year.
It is also understood that Top Pick Investments intends to set up a modern pack-shade within the farm and to construct a 750 kilowatts solar plant to augment power supplies at the farm.
Prior to the latest developments, they were specialising in other cash crops including maize, soya beans, groundnuts and livestock production and fish farming.
Top pick Investment’s chief executive, Danisa Moyo, said recently that they had assembled a complete fish hatchery.
“This is supported by 24 floating cages-each with a carrying capacity of 100 000 fish. At the moment five cages are stocked with 400 000 fish,” he said.
Moyo said they have a staff complement of over 200 people from the Beitbridge district and that more will be hired when the citrus project peaks.
The company also has a chain of service stations, a funeral parlor, and two lodges (Zhovhe Leisure Park and Makhado lodge in Beitbridge).
Bongani Ndlovu