By JONAS MISELO
KAWAMBWA District in Luapula Province is set to have its first-ever cooking oil processing and production plant.
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Agripreneur Managing Director Scott Montel said his company will not only create jobs in the district but also help create a sunflower production value chain.
He also said his company started buying sunflower seed last year in 2022, when it bought about 30 tonnes. They hope to buy 300 tonnes in 2023.
The plant is a K5.5 million investment and is set to create over seven jobs directly and 1,100 farmers indirectly as out growers. It is also expected to produce 200 tonnes of cooking oil per year.
He said his company is expecting to buy 300 tonnes of sunflower seed per year, which translates to approximately K2.1 million per year injected into the local community.
Agripreneur will also be selling cooking oil byproducts such as sunflower cake, which is used as animal feed.
And Kawambwa District Agricultural Coordinator Steven Musonda narrated that the setting up of the cooking oil processing plant will help reduce farmer dependence on the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP).
“Farmers have always cried for fertiliser under the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) and others feel that as long as they are not on the FISP programme, then they are not farmers. But now we are calling them farmers because they can grow sunflower with the least input cost and make more money from selling sunflower seed,” he said.
Mr Musonda noted that the coming in of the processing plant will lead to better household income for farmers and lower cooking oil costs for the people of Kawambwa.
He explained that once it is processed locally, the cost is likely to be slightly lower compared to the oils that are coming from outside the district.
Mr Musonda is optimistic that the setting up of the Agripreneur cooking oil plant will also lead to crop diversification.
It is clear that the setting up of the cooking oil processing plant will lead to more than just creating jobs. It will also boost Kawambwa’s economy in a major way.-NAIS.
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