Tongaat crisis: Small farmers get money for Sept, but 300 bigger growers left unpaid | Fin24

Tongaat Hulett produces round 43% of South Africa’s sugar.

Small-scale
farmers who provide the Tongaat Hulett mills at Felixton, Amatikulu and
Maidstone in KwaZulu-Natal have now been paid for sugar cane delivered in
September.

The
firm, which was positioned in enterprise rescue on October twenty seventh, missed a deadline
to pay R401 million for cane delivered by about 4 300 growers.

However
some 300 business growers haven’t but been paid, in accordance with the affiliation.
That is placing nearly 15 000 jobs in danger as these farmers make use of the huge
majority of the realm’s cane farm employees, it stated in an announcement on Saturday.

Tongaat
entered enterprise rescue after disagreeing with lenders about its
restructuring plan. The group has a debt burden of greater than R6 billion.

The
affiliation raised considerations about Tongaat Hulett’s potential to “make
timeous funds of greater than R345 million on the finish of November for the extra
than 570 000 tons of cane delivered in October.”

“It
can also be important that readability is supplied on plans for the rest of the
season, and to attempt to safe the way forward for Tongaat Hulett for the sake of the
hundreds of livelihoods depending on cane rising within the north coast of
KwaZulu-Natal.”

The
affiliation is in negotiations with Tongaat’s enterprise rescue practitioners to
prioritise funds to business growers, which is able to allow funds to different corporations
together with contractors, haulier corporations and enter suppliers.

Tongaat,
the nation’s largest sugar producer, has been hit by an accounting scandal with
accusations that it inflated its monetary place by R12 billion from 2011 to
2018. Its shares are at present suspended on the JSE.

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