12 Oct 2015

Lobatse Town Council (LTC) Mayor, Ms Malebogo Kruger has lauded Milk Afric for their partnership on a dairy production plant that she said will advance the country’s economy.

Speaking at a press briefing last week at the council chambers, Ms Kruger said the Lobatse town council and Milk Afric partnership started on January 2013 as a Public Private Partnership (PPP), facilitated by Botswana Export Development Investment Agency (BEDIA) and Botswana Embassy in United States of America. 

She said LTC showed interest and signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) in 2013 and availed a farm at Boswelatlou ward, measuring 1375 hectares on a lease of 25 years.

In terms of shareholding, she said, Milk Africa owns 90 per cent share while Lobatse Dairy Estate (LDE) has 10 per cent share and the former would be responsible for executing day to day operations.

She also mentioned that LDE is constituted by six board members, four from LTC and two from Milk Afric (PTY) Ltd.

By the time of full production, she said, 2 000 cows will be milked.

The project could have started in 2013 but was delayed by the Environmental Impact Assessment that lasted for two years.

The LTC leadership have prior to project inception toured Florida to appreciate the dairy model to be replicated in Lobatse, where among others they met Milk Afric (PTY) Ltd partners [Alliance Dairies] and appreciated various dairy farming operations including calving unit, milking parsons, fodder fields, and the silage storage.

She noted that they got to learn about the use of cow dung for electricity production, waste water recycling and also learnt about other optimum use of technology and modern farming methods.

For his part, Milk Afric chief executive officer also the founder, Mr Phil Matibe also lauded LTC for their stable working relationship.

He said the project was advancing as the ground breaking had been done and they were at a stage of constructing calving units, staff houses, internal roads and pastures.

He said Lobatse was sitting on 45 boreholes which had been drilled around 1965 but Milk Afric was going to utilise only 12 out of 45.

He also said they were drilling another high-volume borehole in the farm that will be used to water cows because each cow requires about 100 litres of clean water per day to produce more milk and the rest of the operations would utilise recycled water since the country was hit by shortage of water. 

Mr Matibe said there was high demand of milk at the rate of 65 million litres of raw milk in a year leading the country to import more to meet the demand at the same time increasing the importation bill.

He said in order to close the demand gap, the country would need about four farms of the same magnitude with a stocking rate of about 15 000 lactating cows with about 2 000 milking cows and about 3 000 lactating cows. 

He said the projection costs of the project stands at about P100 million and noted that the milking process will commence on April 2016. They have currently employed 25 permanent and pensionable employees but the number would grow as the business progresses. Ends