Staff Reporter

The Strategic Business Unit (SBU) is set to flood the local market with its final Amarula product, before penetrating the foreign markets.

Speaking to this publication on condition of anonymity, a senior employee at the Amarula processing Plant in Mwenezi, revealed that the company had managed to process significant products, enough to introduce on the local market.

“We are busy working on introducing our products on the market, currently we have a total of 31 000x330mls of ready packs that we are pushing to get on the market soon, and 31 000 units are yet to be bottled.

Currently, we are focused on satisfying the local market at the moment, while we do external market research, as we also aim to export our products,” said the source.

The source further revealed that the SBU had underestimated the quantity of Amarula, to be received from farmers around Mwenezi and invested in a small crushing machine that got overwhelmed.

“Initially SBU bought a small fruit crushing machine that processes 120kgs per hour, with an installed capacity of 200 tonnes per season.  This crushing machine was overwhelmed by fruit suppliers during the last season, leading to high quality fruits turning bad as it took long for them to be crushed.

“This compromised on the quality of the end product, such that SBU decide to acquire another crusher, which they did in June this year from South Africa.  The new crusher processes 1tonne of Amarula fruits per hour and it targets to process 3500 tonnes of Amarula fruit this next season,” said the contact.

The company has established various farmer registration centres around Mwenezi District to increase farmer participation as well as bringing buying centres closer to communities. 

Meanwhile, SBU has been able to create employment as it currently employs 6 permanent workers who are complemented by120 contract workers including downstream workers such as farmers.  The SBU intends to increase its employees by five-fold as its business expands.