09 Mar 2015

Progress made by United Refineries Botswana (URB) towards realisation of an edible oil refinery and seed crushing plant construction has been described as impressive.

This was said by the Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Sadique Kebonang, at the end of a tour of the United Refineries Botswana plant on March 5 in Francistown.

Mr Kebonang said he was happy that the URB team made the project visualisation a reality by utilising available skills. He implored URB to link up with already established companies in order to ensure quality and survive market competitiveness.

The assist minister urged URB to network with institution such as Selibe Phikwe Economic Diversification Unit (SPEDU) to assist and encourage farmers to plough sunflower to feed the refinery.

Earlier when briefing the assistant minister, URB managing director, Mr Mmoloki Tibe said the close to P100 million project would start operation in April and would use raw sunflower imported from South Africa to refine between 2 500 -3 000 tons of edible oil per month.

He said the oil would be sold in Botswana and the remainder would be exported to countries north of Botswana such as Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, DRC, and Zimbabwe where a ready export market exists.

Botswana cooking oil market is 1 000 000 litres of sunflower cooking oil and is all imported from RSA per month. Mr Tibe said the edible oil seeds crushing plant, which is the second stage of the project, would crush a total of 300 tons of sunflower seeds per day.

He said the sunflower seeds would be sourced from farmers in Botswana effective next year noting that the company would embark on a national campaign to encourage all Batswana to plant sunflower to feed the plant and in the process achieves self-sufficiency in edible oils such as margarine, mayonnaise and cooking oil.

Mr Tibe said the project would create direct employment of 500 staff, indirect employment through labourers employed in the fields to assist with the ploughing of sunflower seeds.  

For his part, the chairperson of URB, Mr Samson Guma called for the fast tracking of work permits processing for unavailable skills in the country.  ENDS