Cooking oil producer to install new plant

Published: 05 March 2014

COOKING oil manufacturer, Surface Investments plans to install a new refinery within the next two years to triple production from the current three million litres a month, an official said yesterday.

The new multi-purpose refinery will have capacity of 250 tonnes per day.

In an interview after a tour of the company by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce, chief executive officer Mr Sylvester Mangani said the move was among a number of investments being pursued to boost production.

He said capacity of the existing refinery would also be increased to 120 tonnes of oil per day from 100 tonnes.

At present plant capacity utilisation was 100 percent.

"In terms cooking oil production, right now we are on 100 percent. I think we are producing about 100 tonnes a day so in a month you should expect about three million litres," He said.

"What we will now need to do is in the next two years we are going to put another refinery because the refinery now increases the quantity of oil you produce, so in the next two years we should have tripled the quantity of oil we produce."

Mr Mangani said due to shortages of raw materials last year, the plant ran for half the year as the company was only producing using cotton seed.

He said last year the plant was producing 1, 5 million litres of cooking oil per month.

"Because this year we will be producing using both soya beans and cotton we are not stopping production," he said.

Company chairman Mr Narottam Somani said the company was investing $2 million on renovating the plant to improve efficiencies including saving coal consumption by 30 percent.

Surface Investments is a joint venture between the Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe with 26 percent and an Indian firm, Midex Global which holds 74 percent.

In terms of capacity, Surface Investments is the country's largest multi-oilseed processing plant.

The company says it also exports crude oil to Malawi as well as cotton linters and hulls to South Africa and Europe. Due to the decline in soya bean and cotton production over the years, coupled with competition from cheap imports, cooking oil manufacturers have been failing to optimise their operations.

- New Ziana.