adminMunyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
THE Cold Storage Company (CSC), once the country’s leading meat processor, is on the verge of striking a $90 million deal with undisclosed foreign investors, which will pave the way for its unbundling, a senior official has said. In an interview after a tour of the company’s Gweru depot by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation, CSC chief executive Ngoni Chinogaramombe said they were only waiting for government approval to conclude the deals with the investors.
He said unbundling the company into three units namely Masvingo, Bulawayo and Chinhoyi was part of its turnaround strategy aimed at making the company viable again. “We need to break the CSC into three companies for investors to come in. The first company being Chinhoyi, Bulawayo and Masvingo and their respective farms,” he said.
“We’re saying the CSC plants are still intact; they are functional and can operate at any time but are being underutilised because of lack of capital.” Chinogaramombe said the potential investors would fork out more on the production of cattle on the farm level. “We’re saying if partners come in, they would have to invest in the production of cattle. More money is required to grow the CSC herd.
“We used to run the cattle finance scheme and we think that scheme should be revived,” said Chinogaramombe. He said the company had sought government permission to dispose of idle land on which the abattoirs are built and several employees’ houses in towns, with an expected revenue of millions of dollars.
The assets have been contributing to the huge debts mainly arising from fixed costs such as salaries, wages, rates and taxes. “We’ve been negotiating with a few investors who are interested in coming subject to approval from the government. “If everything goes according to plan, we’re hoping that the deal will be concluded before the end of this year,” he said.
CSC owns abattoirs in Bulawayo, Masvingo, Chinhoyi and Kadoma and several cattle ranches across the country. However, only two abattoirs are operational while the farms carry a herd of 8,533 animals of which 7,741 are owned by tenants while CSC has only 792. CSC has slaughtered only 5,600 animals in the first five months of this year, which is only 5,8 percent of the total number of animals slaughtered in Zimbabwe during this period.
At one time the company was the largest meat processor on the continent, handling up to 150,000 tonnes of beef and associated by-products per year, raking in over $50 million. Portfolio committee chairperson, Cde Christopher Chitindi said the revival of CSC was vital for the economy as it would benefit farmers through the sale of cattle to the company.
Online Reporter