By Chisomo Phiri
One of the country’s top sugar manufucturing companies Illovo Sugar Malawi Limite says it has registered an increase in profit of 30 percent from K20.6 billion to K26.6 billion in 2022.
This is despite the company facing a reduction of tons from 279 to 230 thousand tons due to climatic shocks induced by tropical storms Ana and Dumako which forced them to stop sugar exports.
The company’ Managing Director, Lekani Katandula told journalists in Blantyre on Tuesday that they got the profits after realising higher domestic sales.
” We have seen an increase in profit of what we do as a company. This is despite climatic challenges we have been facing,” he said
Katandula added that they expect to resume exporting sugar this April in order to assist Malawi in forex generation.
Commenting on whether the company plans to reduce the price of the commodity, Katandula said, the company is not ready to reduce the price of the commodity as this can create a chance for vendors to start exporting sugar to other countries, thereby, making the commodity scarcity on the market.
Illovo Sugar Malawi plc is listed on the Malawi Stock Exchange with 76% of the issued share capital held by the Illovo Group and the balance by public and other institutional investors.
The company’s corporate office is based in Limbe, Blantyre with two operations at Nchalo in the southern part of Malawi in Chikwawa and Dwangwa in the mid-central region of Nkhotakota, producing sugar cane and raw, brown, and refined sugar, together with speciality sugars especially at Nchalo.
The company annually cultivates around 1.8 million tons of cane which together with approximately 350 000 tons produced by Malawian smallholder farmers, results in the production of about 250 000 tons of sugar.
