Starafricacorporation (Starafrica) has invested in an alternative source of power in order to deal with the negative impact of power outages on the national grid, which has been affecting production and plant uptime.

The company is an established sugar refinery in Zimbabwe; manufacturing and marketing sugar-based products under two well-known brand names, Goldstar Sugar and Country Choice Foods.

Its product range comprises icing sugar, golden syrup, honey syrup and maple syrup. There are only two sugar mills in Zimbabwe, both owned by Starafricacorporation; producing for local and export consumption to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Company secretary Aldo Musemburi, said in the period to June 2022, power and steam supply constraints were the main causes of reduced throughput.

“The business has since installed a 11kV dedicated power supply line, procured a 1 000kVA generator and electrical cables to augment power supply,” Mr Musemburi said.

Businesses across the economy have complained that the prevailing power outages are crippling production across various sectors of the economy while the use of generators as an alternative source of energy remains costly and not sustainable.

Of late, Zimbabwe’s power supply situation has worsened on the back of constant breakdowns mainly at Zimbabwe’s biggest thermal power plant — Hwange Power Station as well as the three small thermal power plants.

Meanwhile, several companies are at various stages of assembling solar power plants to run their own power stations and reduce dependence on the grid.

Zesa projects that the power crisis would be addressed when the Government completes the US$1,5 billion 600MW expansion of Hwange thermal power plant, with the first 300MW expected to come online this year.

The expansion would increase Hwange’s installed capacity to about 1 300MW from 920MW currently.

According to Mr Musemburi, for  the  first  quarter  of  the  2022/23  financial  year,  production  volumes  of  granulated  white  sugar  at  Goldstar Sugars were 14 percent lower than those attained during the prior year comparative period.

“Consequently, the reduced production led to a three percent decrease in sales volumes when compared with the prior year,” he said.

Mr Musemburi said an overhaul programme on two of the five boilers is nearing completion and these initiatives are expected to result in a significant improvement in production.

For the past two years, the listed sugar production firm has made a significant investment in re-tooling the Harare unit through acceleration of replacement of critical machinery such as centrifugal machines, an effluent treatment plant, and rehabilitation of the raw sugar warehouse.

Mr Musemburi said the equipment maintenance and re-tooling programme, which began in 2020, has started to pay off.

Starafrica’s production  and  sales  volumes  for  its unit, Country  Choice  Foods,  improved  significantly  due  to  the  commissioning of an automatic syrup filling machine, a more robust competitive pricing strategy, as well  as the introduction of new product lines namely baking powder, raisins and cocoa powder.

This resulted in notable increases in sales and production volumes by 81 percent and 68 percent respectively, from the prior year  comparative period.  

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