COTTCO Holdings Limited is seeking strategic partnerships for its Gokwe oil expression plant, as it ventures into cooking oil production, businessdigest can reveal.
The company is setting up a 60 metric tonne (mt) plant in Gokwe, committing over US$1,5 million to the project.
The plant is expected to be delivered by the end of this quarter or early next quarter, marking a significant step in Cottco’s diversification strategy.
“It is a really big structure, and we do not have partners yet,” Cottco chief executive officer (CEO) Rockie Mutenha told businessdigest in an interview.
“It is still our own investment, but we are open for partnerships, and that will be good.”
He said the firm had already made a deposit for the plant but did not disclose how much it had paid.
Mutenha added that Gokwe was chosen because the district had the highest throughput into the factory for processing.
However, the Cottco CEO reiterated that a lot of work still needed to be done to get the plant operational.
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The oil expression plant will be able to produce 60mt per day and approximately 450mt weekly.
“We have got structures in Gokwe. Without committing myself that much, but I think it (investment) is slightly above US$1,5 million,” Mutenha said.
He said the firm was trying to venture into value addition.
“All along, we were ginning and producing two products, saline and gin seed, and selling them as raw products,” Mutenha said.
“But in our strategy, we felt that it is necessary to validate our crops, and therefore we are going to crush the seed into oil, instead of selling it as gin seed.”
He said each time something new was introduced, it was not taken or accepted 100%, which is why the firm would be educating farmers on the project.
“People sometimes want to sit on the terraces and watch to see the success. Once they are happy with the success, they go for it,” Mutenha said.
“We have identified places where we are doing demonstrations, and there are farmers around those areas. They are going to the demonstration sites where they see cotton production and learn about it.”
He said Cottco was seeking to improve efficiency as well as add value to the crop to generate more revenue.
The company will be expanding its outreach to new areas such as Gwanda and Filabusi to conduct these demonstrations.
Holding 90% market share, the Mutapa Investment Fund-owned firm is the leading company in Zimbabwe in the procurement and processing of seed cotton.
Every year, it hires around 400 000 farmers for seed production.
The firm owns six ginneries and can process 107 000mt of seed cotton into ginned seed and lint per season.
