Cottco eyes oil expression plant
BUSINESS REPORTER
Cottco Holdings is set to establish an oil expression plant in Gokwe as it seeks to value add the crop and generate more revenue for the company.
The project will be replicated in all the cotton producing areas to support the government’s devolution strategy, according to Cottco’s acting accounting officer Munyaradzi Chikasha.
“Starting this year, we will put an oil expression plant in Gokwe. That should happen before the end of the first half of this year. So we have already applied for funding. We hope that in Gokwe very soon we will have an oil expression over and above to the ginnery that is already there,” Chikasha told journalists last week.
He could not be drawn into revealing how much has been set aside for the project.
Cottco is the dominant seed cotton buying and processing company in Zimbabwe with a market share of approximately 90%. It contracts close to 400 000 farmers annually. The company owns six ginneries with a capacity to process 107 000MT of seed cotton per season into lint and ginned seed.
It also has 10 business units in Chinhoyi, Chiredzi, Gokwe, Kadoma, Lupane, Mt Darwin, Mutoko, Mutare, Muzarabani and Sanyati.
Chikasha said will invest in a 1.2MW solar project in Muzarabani for uninterrupted ginning processes in the event of power cuts.
“We are going to start with Muzarabani. We have identified a partner who is going to construct a 1.2MW solar plant at Muzarabani ginnery. What we require is about 1 MW. Our maximum load is about 0.7MW so we will be able to release about 0.3MW during peak demand when we are ginning. Out of the ginning period we should be able to release 1MW into the national grid,” Chikasha said.
He said Cottco has identified a partner and “are at the stage of signing a contract with them”.
The project is part of Cottco’s green energy thrust where it wants to fully utilise the abundant solar energy that is within the Muzarabani area, Chikasha said.
