Mahalapye firm wants to ease govt's P8bn headache
Correspondent | Friday December 4, 2020 15:36
I feel compelled to write some comments in response to an article, which appeared in the Mmegi newspaper of November 27, 2020 on the above subject.
What government is proposing to do through measures like import substitution to solve the problems of unemployment is exactly what our company, Lupro (Pty) Ltd has been trying to do for the past eight years.
Botswana’s persistent failure to diversify the economy and import substitute is partially a result of the following:
Lack of political will to effect change; implementation capacity to drive the change; Corruption.
Our company (Lupro Pty Ltd), a fully citizen-owned entity and a pioneer in the manufacturing and packaging of pure sunflower oil in Botswana has faced all these obstacles since its inception in 2006.
Lack of political will is exemplified by our failure despite repeated attempts to get assistance from the relevant departments to enable us to benefit from government’s immense purchasing power.
Unlike other projects where government is directly involved, (Milk Afric, Fengyue Glass Project), we do not require funding. All we are asking for is government to buy our locally produced products thereby creating employment and stimulate diversification. This would also assist us in upscaling to achieve economies of scale and improve our regional competitiveness. However, government continues to buy cooking oil directly from South Africa effectively exporting the jobs that we are trying to create locally.
Our appeals have been made at the highest level to the Ministries of Trade and Industry, Local Government and Rural Development, Presidential Affairs, BITC as well as at GICO (Government Implementation and Coordination office) in the Office of the President.
Even at this level, we have received lukewarm responses at best to being totally ignored at worst.
After eight years, of trying, our question as to why a partially government-funded company has been systematically denied access to government procurement still remains unanswered.
Corruption is exemplified by the fact that despite its considerable investment in infrastructure and manufacturing capacity, our company (the sole manufacturer of refined sunflower oil in the country) has not been able to secure directly any supply contracts, the majority of which go to tenderprenuer companies with the right connections. Reports of these activities to the DCEC has also elicited no response.
Implementation of change should not be left in the hands of lower level bureaucrats as this leaves too much room for shifting of blame in cases of failure. The buck should stop with the permanent secretaries as the ones directly responsible in driving the changes.
Too much emphasis is being placed on foreign direct investment at the expense of local investment. At the end of the day when the foreign company stops making money (that’s why they are here), they will leave for greener pastures but the local company will still be here (hopefully) struggling unaided.
While we wait for some benovelent investor to appear and deliver us from poverty and unemployment, government should also consider assisting those of us who have taken up the challenge of job creation and improving the lot of the local populace.
Charity should begin at home!!
Lupro Pty Ltd is a small scale company set up in late 2006 in Mahalapye with a vision of exploiting local opportunities for wealth creation through appropriate use of technology. To this end we embarked on a project to produce high quality virgin sunflower oil and resultant oil cake (as a by-product).
Botswana imports all its cooking oil so Lupro envisaged that the set up of this project and production facility could decrease the amount of imports with a long-term view of eventually replacing them.
The project set up is in modular form i.e one initial mill with addition of units as anticipated demand for the product increases. A new production facility was set up located in Flowertown Industrial site Mahalapye at a cost of approx P2 million (partly funded by CEDA) and was officially opened in June 2012 by the Director of Economic Diversification Department, Ministry of Trade and Industry.
This plant has an installed capacity to process 300 tonnes of sunflower seed per month and refine 25,000 litres of oil monthly.
We have storage capacity for bulk refined sunflower oil of 40,000 litres and can process 30,000 litres per week. Our bottling and packaging capacity is approximately 1,920 (12x750ml) cartons of oil per day. Approved plans are in place to increase capacity by installing a solvent extraction plant, which would help us increase output and decrease unit costs. The factory now produces and packs pure refined sunflower oil (Lupro Brand) packed in 750ml, 2 litre and 20 litre containers, which is marketed through one local chain-store.
We have over time gained experience in the supply of cooking oil in the country and of recent (2019) have completed the supply of 28,878 (750mlx12) cartons of cooking oil to 13 Food Resources Depots (Ministry of Local Government) around the country.
CHRISTOPHER NAKABALE