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coming into operation of a third tobacco floor, Millennium Tobacco Floors next week.
Millennium is expected to start operating in Msasa from Monday next week. Its entry into the market, just days after the reopening of Boka Tobacco Floors is expected to relieve pressure at the Tobacco Sales Floor, which had been handling all sales since the beginning of the season mid-February.
MTF spokesman, Mr Hillary Mombeshora said the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board officials had already carried out their inspections and were satisfied with the floors.
“We are concentrating on the last touches but we are opening for sales on Monday April 4,” he said.
Mr Mombeshora said about 3 500 bales were expected to be sold on the first day, although the floor had the capacity to sell 7 000 bales, if given the go-ahead by TIMB.
Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board chief executive Dr Andrew Matibiri said they would assign one buying team to the new floors in addition to the two operating at Boka floors and three at TSF.
“We have already discussed with the buying companies and they have indicated that they will be able to field enough buying teams to cover all three floors,” he said.
“All stakeholders agree that the opening of MTF will indeed reduce congestion and pressure on the other two floors,” he said.
Congestion at the floors had been primarily caused by farmers who have been coming to the floors without having booked their crop, as required.
The de-centralisation of the registration process by the TIMB late last year has not produced the desired results as most farmers were shunning the registration teams sent out to their areas, preferring instead to proceed to Harare to register and sell their crop at the same time.
At the beginning of the marketing season about 32 000 farmers had registered to sell their crop this year, compared with 52 000 growers last season.
However, by last week the number had almost doubled to 52 226 growers with 3 462 growers having registered last week alone.
But the 3 462 growers registered last week were a decrease of 20 percent from the previous week’s figures.
Small-scale, A1 and communal tobacco growers constitute about 82 percent of the total registered tobacco growers.
In addition the auction floors had been failing to conclude the sales, resulting in a carry-over of bales from the previous sale to the next day’s sale.
A total of 170 to 200 million kg of flue-cured tobacco is expected to be delivered to the floors this season, up from 120 million kg last season.
Meanwhile, 25,5 million kg have been sold since the beginning of the season at an average price of US$3,04 per kg, realising US$77,7 million.
This compares favourably with last year’s 21,2 million kg sold at US$3,27 per kg raising US$69,4 million during the same period.
Of the 25,5 million, US$15,1 million kg worth US$48,6 million was sold under contract at an average price of US$3,21 per kg.
The balance of 10,4 million kg worth US$29,1 million was sold under auction at US$2,80 a kg.