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Zvamaida Murwira Harare Bureau
ZESA Holdings has switched off Sable Chemicals, the country’s sole manufacturer of Ammonium Nitrate (AN), forcing the company to shut down and rendering about 500 people jobless.

The closure followed an announcement by Energy and Power Development Minister Samuel Undenge last week that 40 megawatts that had been channelled to the firm would be diverted to residential areas.

Sable chemicals chief executive, Jack Murehwa, confirmed the development yesterday.

“We’re off already. Zesa has switched us off. We’ve closed our plant. This has affected about 500 workers. There is nothing we can do. We’ve been engaging Zesa but failed. We will, however, engage the government and see if we can reach common ground,” he said.

Murehwa said the withdrawal of electricity meant they would stop manufacturing fertiliser because they had no alternative source of power in the immediate future.

He said he had been locked up in several meetings over the weekend trying to persuade Zesa but failed.

The decision to stop operations is likely to affect agricultural production as farmers will have to do with the available AN on the market for the coming summer cropping season.

Murehwa, however, said the company, a joint venture between Chemplex Corporation and TA Holdings, had successfully completed feasibility studies on adopting new technology which would use Coal Bed Methane.

CBM is a method of extracting methane from a coal deposit through a process called steam reforming.

Methane absorbed into a solid coal matrix will be released if the coal seam is depressurised and hydrogen will be extracted.

CBM will generate electricity once commissioned and some of it will be fed into the national grid unlike the current electrolysis plant which was set up in 1972 and had become expensive to run due to antiquated machinery.

Murehwa said the company was now looking for funding, believed to be around $600 million, to construct a pipeline to transport gas from Lupane gas fields to Sable Chemicals plant near Kwekwe.

When Sable Chemicals is operating at full capacity, it requires 115 MW to produce 240,000 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser per year.

This year, the company was geared towards producing 100,000 tonnes ahead of the summer cropping season.

The firm was in September 2009 forced to suspend operations as it could not pay for the high electricity tariffs charged by Zesa.

The government had to intervene by appointing a special Cabinet committee to map the way forward.

Production resumed two months later after an internal arrangement between the government and Zesa.

The country has, during the past few years, been forced to import fertiliser as the local companies were failing to meet demand.

The low yields recorded by farmers over the same period were largely as a result of either shortage of the fertiliser or late delivery of the commodity to farmers.

The decision to switch off Sable Chemicals, which owes $150 million in unpaid bills to the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), was among a cocktail of drastic measures announced by the government last week.

Minister Undenge said major mining companies and other heavy power consumers such as Sable Chemicals had to reduce consumption by up to 25 percent.

Security cantonments have also been asked to load-shed non-essential areas as part of measures adopted by the government to reduce the impact of the massive power cuts being experienced across the country.

Minister Undenge told Parliament last week that the government had engaged Mozambique to increase electricity supply.

“We usually import 50 megawatts of electricity from Mozambique but we are engaged in talks with them to increase the supply.

“Zambia is also experiencing worse challenges than us as a result of shortage of electricity. Not only Zambia but the whole Sadc region is being affected by electricity shortages,” he said.