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Business Reporter

Zimbabwe Sugar Sales (ZSS), the marketing and distribution arm of the country’s sugar industry emerged as the overall winner at this year’s Exporter of the Year Awards.

The awards, held last Friday by the country’s trade and export promotion body, Zimtrade, honours the country’s top exporting companies for their contribution to national exports.

This year’s awards, which were running under the theme, “Adapt, Innovate, Export,” recognised top exporters in 17 different categories including the exporter of the year award that was won by ZSS.

After winning the processed foods exporter of the year award, in which Tanganda Tea Company was the runner-up, ZSS went on to scoop the Overall Exporter of the Year Award.

For the top accolade, ZSS beat listed companies such as Padenga (Winner of the Hides and Skins Exporter of the Year Award), Seed Co Zimbabwe (Winner of the Agricultural Inputs Award), Zimplow (Agriculture Implements Division) and Border Timbers (Building and Construction).

Other winners were, ZimFlora (Floriculture), Zimbabwe Flower Exports (Fresh Produce), Zimbabwe Spinners and Weavers (Textiles), Paramount (Clothing), Zambezi Tanners (Leather) among others.

TN Art Welding was awarded the SME Exporter of the Year Award.

ZSS currently exports sugar to a number of countries within the SADC and COMESA blocs as well as North America, according to its chairman Muchadeyi Masunda.

“ZSS is also working in close conjunction with Allan Majuru, the CEO of ZimTrade, and his team with a view to penetrating the potentially lucrative markets in the DRC and the Great Lakes Region, comprising Rwanda and Burundi.

“In this latter regard, ZSS is eternally grateful to our government for the strong ties which have been nurtured with Rwanda and the DRC, in particular,” said Mr Masunda.

Commenting on ZSS’s achievements, Mr Masunda said the accolades are in no small measure glowing testimony of the symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship which exists amongst the 1200 small scale sugarcane farmers, who are beneficiaries of the land reform programme, and the large scale sugarcane growers under Tongaat Hulett Zimbabwe, as well as the sugar refining company, Starafricacorporation.

The sugar industry is one of the largest formal employers in Zimbabwe with a total labour force of between 25 000 to 27 000 employees mainly in the Lowveld part of Masvingo Province and according to Mr Masunda, the small scale sugarcane growers are arguably the strongest group of productive farmers in Zimbabwe.

Because of their productivity, Mr Masunda said small scale sugarcane growers’ dire need for more land should be prioritised “so that they may increase their current contribution and thus help Zimbabwe to exceed the present installed capacity of producing between 600 000 to 800 000 metric tonnes of sugar, especially after the commissioning of the giant Tugwi-Mukosi Dam in May 2017”.

“I am really cock-a-hoop that Zimbabwe Sugar Sales [ZSS] scooped the 2021 Exporter of the Year (Processed Foods Category) and overall winner 2021 Exporter of the Year (All Categories) at the ZimTrade 2021 Exporter of the Year Awards Ceremony last week.

“I am very bullish about the future of our country’s sugar industry because we now have virtually all the ingredients in place – the land; the water; the sophisticated irrigation system; the small and large scale growers of sugarcane; the refineries and affordable funding schemes such as, inter alia, the CABS | European Investment Bank [EIB] facilities and, last but not least, the invaluable support from the Tongaat Hulett Group, a multinational corporate entity, which has magnanimously agreed to set in motion a process which will enable the small scale sugarcane growers to acquire meaningful equity in ZSS”.