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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
BULAWAYO-based agro-processing company, United Refineries Limited, has set aside $2 million for soya bean contract farming to improve supply of the raw material to boost its capacity utilisation levels.
The firm, which is the second largest cooking oil refiner in Zimbabwe, needs 96,000 tonnes of oil seed annually but can only access about 50 percent of that locally.

United Refineries chief executive officer Busisa Moyo said the project would involve farmers in Umguza and Jotsholo in Lupane. “We’re partnering with some local banks to put some soya growing under hectarage close to Bulawayo. We need about $2 million for the soya project and we also have some foreign banks who have given some credit lines. Currently, we are getting the soya from Chinhoyi, which is very far,” he said.

“We’re doing contract farming so that we have enough oil seed, there is a big shortage of oil seed that’s why we are doing contract farming.”

Moyo urged the government to give incentives to oil pressers to do contract farming. Due to shortage of soya bean on the local market, United Refineries was importing some of the raw material from Zambia to cover the deficit.

Moyo said they had already identified some of the farmers for contract farming.
“In the soya contract farming project, we have partnered with SNV where the community in semi-rural areas will put between five and 10 hectares under soya and United Refineries will guarantee for every oil seed that the farmers produce,” he said.

He said they have also engaged the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) with a view to lease one of the authority’s farms so that United Refineries grows soya bean.

United Refineries has a refining capacity of 8,000 metric tonnes of oil seeds per month. At the moment, the company is operating at 70 percent for its cooking oil division and 40 percent for the soap division.

“Our capacity utilisation is slightly above 70 percent on cooking oil, a little bit lower on soaps at around 40 percent. We were previously around 70 percent but because there was a shortage of the raw material (tilo) in South Africa, we then had a problem. We are looking to bring it up to 70 percent in the last quarter,” said Moyo.

At present the country is spending more than $4 million per month importing cooking oil despite increased capacity by local seed processing companies.