Sugar plant to be completed in June

Dar es Salaam. As the government intensifies its efforts to end the shortage of sugar by 2025, the construction of a mini-processing facility for the sweetener will be completed by the end of June this year.

Tanzania Engineering and Manufacturing Design Organisation (Temdo), which is implementing the project, was initially meant to complete the plant in June 2022 and become operational the following month.

However, due to a delay in the disbursement of funds, it had to be postponed, according to Temdo.

In what could be described as a sigh of relief, Temdo director general Prof Frederick Kahimba told The Citizen on Wednesday this week that his organisation received the funds in November.

“We received all the funds in November last year from the government and the Sugar Board of Tanzania (SBT) for the project, whose design started in March 2021,” said Prof Kahimba.

The government has disbursed Sh350 million, SBT Sh166 million and Temdo Sh44 million to support the construction of the Sh560 million plant.

Upon completion, explained Prof Kahimba, the plant to be installed at Dumila, Morogoro, with the capacity to process 200 tonnes of raw cane will produce 20 tonnes of brown sugar per day.

He said depending on customer’s demand, Temdo could also be able to construct mini-plants at as low a price as Sh250 million.

“It is not as expensive as it may seem. The price is twice as low as the imported ones,” Prof Kahimba observed.

“It is the government’s commitment to address the challenge of sugar shortage and for this to happen, we need small-scale processors to complement large-scale plants,” he recounted.

The country’s four factories of Kagera Sugar Ltd, Kilombero Sugar, Mtibwa Sugar Estates Ltd and TPC Ltd produce an estimated 370,000 tonnes of sugar annually against the domestic demand of about 670,000 tonnes.

Going by the ruling-CCM manifesto, Tanzania plans to become self-sufficient in the near future by producing 700,000 tonnes of sugar by 2025.

As a result, under the period of review, the country plans to create 7 million jobs in the formal and informal sectors.  It should be recalled that in the country, in Babati and Manyara, for instance, there are small-scale sugar production industries whose plants have been imported.

What Temdo is doing is bringing up innovation that will save sugar processing.

This will be made possible through improving the technology that is used in the current factories as well as constructing its own mini-plants so that processors are not compelled to import the same at a high cost.

Noting that some 200,000 tonnes of sugarcane were being left unsold annually, he said the new move would create a market for the given raw materials.

In an effort to ensure self-sufficient sugar supply, China and India are using the same approach of mini-processing plants to complement large scale factories.

The Asian countries are major hubs of sugar producing countries with ample presence in the global sugar scenario.

The two countries have a rich history of sugarcane and sugar production since time immemorial, and the industry has gradually evolved to find a place among the top sugar producing countries of the world.