Cottco in value addition drive

Source: Cottco in value addition drive | The Herald

Precious Manomano
Herald Reporter
Cottco wants more ginneries and oil expressing plants nearer farmers, and a third spinning company to take up more of the lint to ensure value addition in line with the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1).

NDS1 targets to enhance the value of locally-manufactured products and empower rural communities.

The intervention dovetails with President Mnangagwa’s vision for the country to achieve a prosperous and empowered upper middle income society by 2030.

In an interview, Cottco board chairperson Mr Sifelani Jabangwe said as part of transformation, the company focused on value addition projects such as additional ginneries and oil plants so that they locate them closer to farmers.

“We have recently launched our brand,” he said.

“Our farmers and stakeholders are at the centre of everything so we support our farmers fully and capacitate them with everything they require so that they produce better and cascade to more people in rural areas.

“That way we will be moving towards Vision 2030 of an upper middle income economy. As part of transformation, we are also looking at value addition projects, additional ginneries and oil plants.”

Mr Jabangwe said the establishment of the ginneries and oil plants was largely seen as a landmark investment that will drive rural development, adding that employment creation and income generation will empower rural communities.

“The benefits of having these closer to the farmers are that there will be employment creation,” he said.

“Once you have jobs being created you will also have other downstream benefits from that. In addition to the ginneries, we are also looking at setting up oil plants which will take the gin seeds that is produced from cotton and produce cooking oil to sell in the communities.

“As part of the transformation, we want to go further than the value chain and make sure that we start spinning yarn to some of the areas closer to cotton, all this come from cotton and this is in line with national development strategy 1 which talks about value addition.”

Mr Jabangwe said the country exported cotton lint as it was, adding that those benefits were accruing to other countries and their economies.

“As Cottco, we are going to push this to ensure others will benefit and start to do the same or else get the yarn and start to do the fabric and get the stock feeds that will come from squeezing the oil and start to do other business,” he said.

Mr Jabangwe said the country had two spinners producing yarns, adding that they wanted to add another spinning company so that there was improvement on availability of yarn.

He said improvement of yarns had a lot of benefits, especially to textile industries as there was no need to import from other countries.

Cotton is a strategic crop that is interwoven into the rural economy and indeed, the national economy, as it is a cash crop for farmers, particularly those in drought-prone areas.

The crop provides lint for downstream textile industries and generates export earnings, while the cotton seed is used to extract edible oils for human consumption with the seed residue used in animal feeds.

Production of cotton can transform rural communities through the major cash crop and having huge benefits to the economy at large as a major source of cooking oil for local consumption and cotton fibre for export markets.

The intervention by the Government on cotton production through the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme was meant to revive the sector, which was collapsing due to low prices offered by merchants and other problems related to inputs.

But now, production of cotton has risen, with some farmers who had abandoned the crop returning to the field because of the Government intervention.