The Municipal Chief Executive for Komenda Edina Eguafo Abrem, Solomon Ebo Appiah, has announced that the Komenda Sugar Factory will soon start the processing of unrefined sugar.
According to the MCE, the management of the Sugar factory will import the molasses to be refined until such a time they are able to grow the right kind of sugarcane needed to feed the plant.
Solomon Ebo Appiah said the measure is to get the factory functioning and produce sugar at a cheaper cost.
“This is no political talk. I will not play politics with the people I serve,” Mr. Appiah stated.
“There are a lot of works going on at the factory right now. A three million litre reservoir has been constructed. The roof of the factory has been changed, and a raw sugar warehouse has been built to store raw unrefined sugar for the processing,” he noted as an example of the ongoing work.
Background
The Komenda Sugar Factory was built at a cost of $35 million from an Indian EXIM Bank facility.
It was inaugurated by then-President John Mahama in May 2016, but stopped operations not long after.
The factory was expected to employ 7,300 people along the value chain, boosting employment prospects in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem municipality.
President Akufo-Addo had given indications that the Komenda Sugar Factory would be fully operationalised in April 2022.
At the time, he said there were some civil works ongoing at the factory site, and that by the end of March 2022, all those activities would be completed to pave way for production.
A Ghanaian-Indian company, Park Agrotech Ghana Limited, is the new investor who will take over the operations of the factory.
The government in 2019 said the company was expected to inject $28 million into the factory between 2020 and 2023.
$11 million was to go into sugarcane cultivation; $6 million to upgrade plant and machinery, and $11 million as working capital to bring the ailing factory back on its feet.
The Ghana-based company is a subsidiary of the Skylark Group of Companies of India, one of the largest integrated farming businesses in India.
Posted by: Emmanuel Romeo Tetteh
