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OSAZ partners SA firms in sunflower deal

12 Oct, 2018 - 00:10 0 Views
OSAZ partners SA firms in sunflower deal

eBusiness Weekly

Elita Chikwati, Kudakwashe Mhundwa
The Oil Seed Association of Zimbabwe (OSAZ) has partnered South Africa based companies, AGT Foods Africa and Goldstone & Co to contract 300 000 small holder farmers under a $50 million deal to produce sunflower and cut on imports.

The five-year project will also increase oil production and empower farmers financially.

Under the partnership OSAZ provides the farming area, Goldstone are the financiers (who are expected to inject about $50 million towards the project) while AGT Foods Africa provides the technical support.

OSAZ also expects to contract farmers to produce 100000 hectares of groundnuts and will in future also include chia among its oil crops.

In an interview after receiving the South African investors, OSAZ operations manager, Farai Muchenjekwa, said sunflower production had declined due to lack of financial assistance as farmers were faced with financial challenges and viable markets.

“In terms of nutrients it is given science that it is actually a better crop in terms of oil it produces but I think people had forgotten about the sunflower seed so I am saying as OSAZ, we have come in to revive that oil sector. Even the soya beans that we have there is a huge deficit of soya beans in the country.

“So this also compliments other efforts that other stakeholders are also doing in terms of oil production. Since it was an abandoned programme right now there is no proper statics because it was last produced probably around 2003, but roughly about 5000 tonnes a year.

“As OSAZ we are coming in with the farms (land), technical know-how and we have financiers at our back and we are speaking with one voice let our lands be productive once again let us revitalise our agriculture sector.

“AGT are here to train our agronomists so that we can see the best farming practices so we can maximise our yields, we also want to plug in the gap we have with oil because currently we import about 250 million worth of oil every year so we want to plug in that gap and whilst we plug in that gap and feed
the local market, we also want to export,” he said.

Muchenjekwa said for this current season the association is targeting to generate about 500 million in exports.

“We are championing the revitalisation of the oil seed production in the country, we have our regional partners AGT and we are targeting mostly our small-scale farmers as they constitute about 70 percent of the land that is in the country so we want to maximise production on that land.

“So for this season we are targeting 300 000 hectares of sunflower production and 100 000ha of groundnuts production and if we translate all that production into monitory terms, we are targeting $500 million in exports. We also expect to venture into value addition of the oils seed and we expect to purchase the machinery soon,” he said.

Goldstone & CO representative, Owen Sher said his company intends to invest about $50 million into the project and this could be reviewed upwards depending with the production levels.

“Our financing capacity at the moment is between $25-50 million. We have been providing fertiliser and other inputs as Goldstone and our sister company Umbrella in Zimbabwe for a few years now and we believe that increasing our investment capacity into a more holistic approach into a bigger and longer sustained relationship for the next five years will yield the objectives needed both from an international investment side and an economic development side,” he said.

SA agronomist, Neils Harmuth said he had a lot of experience in sunflower production and was prepared to share it with local farmers to boost production.

“We have vast experience in the production of sunflower and we are willing to share with it the local farmers so they can boost sunflower production,” he said.

Demand for oils seed stands at 600 000 tonnes while the country currently produces 37 440 tonnes.

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