Entrepreneurship ministry kicks off Lobatse leather park development

Pauline Dikuelo | Monday April 3, 2023 06:00

Raw material: The leather park is supposed to leverage off the Botswana Meat Commission’s slaughter to create a value-added industry PIC: MORERI SEJAKGOMO

Presenting his inaugural budget recently, Entrepreneurship minister, Karabo Gare told Parliament that the first phase of the project had started and activities such as fencing of the plot and construction of access roads would be undertaken soon.

He said this would pave the way for service infrastructure connectivity.

Gare said the project aims to facilitate the processing of hides and skins, which are currently being exported raw, into finished leather which would stimulate the development of leather manufacturing products in Botswana.

“Local and international investors are being targeted to set up tanning and leather manufacturing in the leather park,” he said. “Employment creation, domestic growth and import substitution are amongst the expected outputs of the project whose completion is anticipated in early 2025.”

The leather park has been in the pipeline since 2014 with little progress, a fact that has frustrated Lobatse authorities and residents.

The minister said the implementation of the Leather Industry Park was delayed by the need for project reconfiguration to address emerging risks from a change in the project scope and location, Gare said.

Additionally, he said the declining national cattle herd warranted a review of the project’s business case to determine the minimal amount of raw material required to kickstart a viable leather processing operation.

“Validation of raw material and a review of the business case were conducted and a new scope was developed and approved by Cabinet in August 2021,” he said.

In addition, the minister said there is an ongoing process of re-sizing, reconfiguring facilities and changing technologies to adhere to internationally accepted environmentally sustainable standards as per leather audits protocol by various leather groups.

“As a result, the initially planned five 10-tonne tannery daily capacity units were consolidated into one unit for efficiency and economies of scale,” he said.