Gledhow Sugar eyes new growth after emerging from business rescue
All 440 mill employees retained their jobs during the business rescue, which also preserved nearly 3 500 downstream jobs.
The Gledhow Sugar Company is looking forward to growth for the first time in many years.
After a torrid four years, which culminated in the company entering voluntary business rescue last March, management are hopeful that operations can now be expanded.
While the business rescue process is officially still underway until March next year, business rescue practitioner Harry Spain confirmed that the majority of creditors have already been paid.
This after the Ushukela Consortium took over the company five months ago, injecting new capital and bringing with it renewed optimism. The Ushukela Consortium is a partnership between the Sokhela sugar family and the Kenyan Chatthe Sugar Company.
“We haven’t done recapitalisation for a long time and finally feel as though we are forward looking instead of backwards,” said Gledhow general manager, Andrew Francis.
“We are now looking to get back to the top, it’s a completely different mindset from survival.”
All 440 staff at the Gledhow Mill remained employed throughout business rescue, while the mill’s continued operation allowed for the almost 3 500 downstream jobs to remain unaffected.
That includes jobs at the nearby Sappi paper mill, which uses bagasse – a by-product of Gledhow’s sugar processing – as the raw material for its production.
“At the end of the day that’s why you go into business rescue as opposed to liquidation, to save jobs,” said Francis.
“The Sappi mill is engineered to run on bagasse and there’s been a supply agreement since the 70s. If we went down, it would be very difficult and expensive for them to stay open.”
But Gledhow did not go down and the feeling around the mill is uniformly that a potential crisis has been averted.
“We feel by saving the mill we have saved a community,” said Spain.
“It has taken a huge effort from everyone and the mill is now in a position to grow.”
“We were able to operate without taking any outside money and that was only possible through finding efficiencies that will stay in place and be improved upon going forward.”
At present the mill operates on around 1.3-million tonnes of cane per season but they are hoping to get back to mill capacity of 1.6-million.
“It has obviously been a difficult time for our suppliers too, as our success is tied to each other,” said Francis.
“They have been able to stay operational but not expand and now that is a possibility for them.”
Elsewhere at the mill, Francis said they are also looking at manufacturing new products. Currently they produce sugar, molasses and fibre but alcohol, fertilizer, paper and power are all potential future additions.
Chatthe Sugar’s Kenya operations produce all of the above and will no doubt provide expertise for their newest acquisition in Gledhow.
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