Uganda’s Three Biggest Sugar Producers Increased Output by 3.4% Last Year

By Fred Ojambo | Bloomberg | Sugar output at Uganda’s three biggest producers climbed 3.4 percent in 2010 after they expanded their operations, the Uganda Sugar Cane Technologists Association said.

Output increased to 292,052 metric tons in the 12 months through December, from 282,386 tons a year earlier, the association said today in an e-mail from the capital, Kampala. The three plants announced plans in 2008 to spend a combined $100 million expanding capacity and increasing power generation.

Production was 6.8 percent lower than an initial forecast of 313,240 tons, and 2.6 percent below a revised projection in November of 300,000 tons because of reduced cane supplies to two of the producers, according to the association.

Supplies to Kakira Sugar Works Ltd., the biggest producer, and Sugar Corp. of Uganda Ltd., the smallest of the three plants, were affected by a drought, it said.

Output by Kakira, owned by Madhvani Group, which says it is the biggest private investor in Ugandan industries, fell 4.3 percent to 151,110 tons. Kinyara Sugar Works Ltd., the second- largest, produced 90,512 tons, up 19 percent from a year earlier. Kinyara is 51 percent-owned by Rai Group, a Kenya and Mauritius-based agro-forest company.

Production at Sugar Corp., which is jointly owned by the Ugandan state and Mumbai-based Mehta Group, rose 4.3 percent to 50,430 tons.

The three plants account for about 98 percent of the East African country’s annual production, with two new plants accounting for the rest, according to the association.

Uganda’s government plans to sell its 49 percent stake in Kinyara in an initial public offering this year, the country’s Privatization Unit said in March.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fred Ojambo in Kampala at fojambo@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.