Sizwe samaYende in Nelspruit | Monday 3.30pm
SOUTH Africa’s second largest primary tobacco company, with an initial market capitalisation of R100-million and representing 35% of total production in the country, opened for business on Monday.
Lowveld Golden Leaf was formally incorporated on July 28 but opened its offices in the Mpumalanga capital of Nelspruit on Monday, African Eye News Service reports.
Boosting 80 Mpumalanga-based tobacco farmers as founder shareholders, Golden Leaf has also taken ownership of the Lowveld Farmers’ Co-operative Investment’s R65-million primary tobacco processing plant in Nelspruit.
“South Africa is one of the very few countries in the world were the processing industry still lies in the hands of the primary producer.” Golden Leaf chief executive Louis Smith said.
Estimating the new company’s annual output at 7-million kilograms of processed tobacco, Smith said that Golden leaf intends to expand its contracts with companies such as Rothmans South Africa, to which it currently supplies with four million kilograms of blended, threshed and reconditioned tobacco.
Smith used the opportunity to lash out at the proposed Tobacco Bill saying that it will lead to widespread retrenchment of labourers in the tobacco industry. “The tobacco industry creates 500 permanent jobs in the Lowveld region alone every year. We’d lose a lot of these, as well as losing a lot of the smaller emergent farmers who have just entered the industry,” he said.