Zimbabwe - Tobacco Reporter

Zim Farmers Pleased with Early Tobacco

Farmers in Zimbabwe’s Karoi and Headlands area have been pleased with the quality of early planted tobacco, reports The Herald.

The crop is generally reported to be in good condition and many small-scale farmers, who rely on rainfall, are still in the process of planting.

This year to date, Zimbabwean tobacco farmers have planted 53,571 ha of tobacco compared with 38,312 ha during the previous growing season, according to the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development.

Statistics also revealed that about 18,614 ha were put under irrigated tobacco and 34,957 under dryland tobacco.

The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board recently increased the number of licensed tobacco contractors to 42 from 39 as more merchants qualified.

Tobacco continues to rank as one of Zimbabwe’s most important non-food crops.

Zimbabwe earned $650 million during the 2022 tobacco marketing season, which closed Oct. 21. The figure was up from $589 million last year.

December 2, 2022

Tobacco Damaged by Fake Chemicals

At least 400 ha of irrigated tobacco have been damaged in Zimbabwe after farmers applied counterfeit chemicals to their crop, reports The Sunday Mail.

Following reports of abnormally growing tobacco plants in October, plant health service officers determined that some farmers had used chlorpyrifos, a hazardous pesticide that is banned for use on tobacco and many other crops, according to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB).

Remarkably, the symptoms on the affected crops are typically associated with 2,4D-related herbicide damage rather than the use of chlorpyrifos, according to TIMB director for research and extension services Susan Dimbi, who warned farmers against using unregistered agrochemicals.

Zimbabwean police and seed company officials have launched a campaign to crack down on counterfeit agricultural products, which are generally sold at considerably lower prices than genuine products.

November 21, 2022

Iranian Tobacco Mulls Investment in Zimbabwe

The Iranian Tobacco Co. wants to invest in Zimbabwe to reduce the cost associated with buying tobacco through middlemen, reports The Sunday Mail. Among the areas the Iranians are targeting are irrigation, curing and mechanization. They also want to contract with farmers and set up factories in Zimbabwe.

The investments were discussed during a visit to Tehran by a delegation led by Zimbabwe First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa.

“We get our needs through agents, and prices go higher for us and also causing Zimbabwean farmers to have little profit,” said Iran’s vice president of commerce and economy, Hamid Gharesheikh, during the meeting.

“We want to get companies to work with directly in Zimbabwe and do away with middlemen. We are under sanctions, and it’s difficult for us to import from other Western countries, but with Zimbabwe, we have a better understanding and for that, our cooperation will be helpful to both of us. We can also supply you with equipment such as tractors and implements for production. We can also supply dryers for curing and processing,” he said.

The proposed cooperation dovetails with Mnangagwa’s passion to economically empower Zimbabwe’s citizenry, especially women and youths, in the effort to attain upper middle-income status for the country by 2030.

During the meeting, Gharesheikh said Iran would prioritize women in its investments.

November 13, 2022

Voedsel Banned From Contracting Farmers

Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) has banned Voedsel Tobacco International from contracting farmers this season after failing to pay farmers for two years, reports The Herald.

“Voedsel won’t be participating this year because they owe huge amounts of money to tobacco growers,” an unnamed official told The Herald.

Voedsel Director Tennyson Hwandi blamed “white-owned companies” for working against indigenous tobacco merchants.

“Big tobacco companies are being threatened by Black-owned tobacco companies, and Voedsel being one of the major players has been a target. They are determined to see us closing down,” he was quoted as saying, adding that Voedsel has already been giving its farmers inputs for the upcoming growing season.

A TIMB official said that if Voedsel was indeed issuing inputs, this would be illegal because the regulator had not licensed the company.

With buying facilities in tobacco-growing regions, including Rusape, Marondera and Karoi, Voedsel was among the major financiers of tobacco contract schemes.

Zimbabwe sold 212.7 million kg of tobacco at a value of USD650.3 million during the 2022 tobacco marketing season, compared with 211.1 million kg worth USD589.6 during the previous buying period.

November 8, 2022

Zimbabwe: More Than 12,500 Ha of Tobacco Planted

Zimbabwean tobacco growers have planted 2,107 ha of dryland tobacco to date this season, reports The Herald, citing data from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB).

According to TIMB spokesperson Chelesani Tsarwe, 133,724 farmers have registered to grow tobacco this season compared to 111,063 during the same period last year.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union President Shadreck Makombe told The Herald that tobacco planting was progressing well.

“Dry land tobacco farmers have started planting especially in those areas where the rains fell,” he said. “We will see planting activities intensifying, especially as we go forward from next week onward.”

The area put under irrigated tobacco was 10,483 ha as of Nov. 1, bringing the total hectarage under tobacco to 12,590 ha.

Despite efforts to diversify into other products, tobacco remains one of Zimbabwe’s greatest generators of foreign currency.

During the 2022 tobacco marketing season, Zimbabwe earned USD650 million from tobacco sales, up from USD589 million the previous year.

November 4, 2022

Zimbabwe: Tobacco Sales Hit $650 Million

Zimbabwe earned $650 million during the 2022 tobacco marketing season, which closed Oct. 21, reports All Africa. The figure was up from $589 million last year.

In a statement announcing the end of the 2022 tobacco marketing season, the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) expressed delight with improved sales volumes and deliveries to auction floors.

The value of sales was up 10.3 percent over last year while volume increased 0.75 percent, according to the regulatory body.

As of Oct. 21, 2022, a total of 212,711,370 kg of tobacco had been sold compared with 211,100,219 kg sold during the same period in 2021.

“The increase in tobacco sold as well as the value is evidence of our efforts as an industry to establish a $5 billion industry by 2025,” said the TIMB.

October 31, 2022

CRP to Build $80 million Plant in Harare

Cut Rag Processors plans to build an $80 million cigarette factory in Harare, Zimbabwe, reports The Sunday Mail, citing sources familiar with the project.

The company, which is one of the country’s largest exporters of cut rag and manufactures the Remington Gold cigarette brand, has already started clearing 60,000 square meters of land in the Lochinvar industrial area.

The factory will have both a primary department for the production of cut rag and a secondary department for the manufacture of cigarettes, an unnamed source told The Sunday Mail.

While confirming the construction of the new facility, Cut Rag Processors Managing Director Nyasha Chinhara declined to provide details, citing “finalization of confidential internal processes.”

The project fits with Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan, which aims to extract more value from the tobacco business.

The world’s sixth largest producer of leaf tobacco, Zimbabwe currently captures only a fraction of the trade’s value. The government aims to unlock $5 billion in export revenue by 2025.

Net foreign currency inflows from tobacco stood at $45.7 million in 2020. About 98 percent of tobacco produced in Zimbabwe is exported in green (semi-processed) form by big tobacco merchants.

Zimbabwe has three processing facilities owned by Zimbabwe Leaf Tobacco, Tobacco Processors Zimbabwe and Mashonaland Tobacco Co.

Cut Rag Processors was formed in February 2000 as the first independent cut rag production facility in Zimbabwe servicing both the domestic and export markets.

The establishment of the company paved the way for the merger of BAT and Rothmans in 2000. Previously, the Competition and Tariff Commission had rejected the merger out of concern that the merged entity would create a monopoly.

Between 2012 and 2014, Cut Rag Processors closed its cigarette line. A year later, the company decided to exit the entire tobacco business. It returned to production after its owner, Gold Leaf, sold the business to new shareholders in 2019.

Encouraged by the government’s plan to boost Zimbabwe’s tobacco earnings, the new investor injected capital into the manufacturing business.

October 9, 2022

Failure to Launch

Zimbabwe’s attempt to diversify into cannabis is proving more challenging than some anticipated.

By Daisy Jeremani

Zimbabwe announced its approval for cannabis growing for medicinal and industrial use in April 2018 amid much hope for an immediate economic impact.

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube projected export revenues of up to usd1.2 billion in the first year of growing, processing and exporting the crop and its products. The forecast is almost at par with what gold, the southern African country’s most lucrative export, brings in—and higher than the amount it generates from tobacco, its current No. 1 agricultural export. Cannabis was, too, touted as a diversification route for tobacco growers amid declining demand for the golden leaf.

However, experts have cautioned that Zimbabwe may not realize the benefits as rapidly as authorities initially projected. Forty-two months since the government issued the first licenses, only 15 out of the 57 companies have started work, hampered by a plethora of challenges. Chief among them: lack of financing and expertise.

Speaking to Tobacco Reporter just after her organization, Zimbabwe Industrial Hemp Trust (ZIHT), hosted a cannabis roundtable under the theme “Unpacking the Challenges and Potential of Cannabis as a Medicine” in Harare, the capital city, on Sept. 7, 2022, Zorodzai Maroveke said a lot of work still needs to be done for the country to realize gains from the crop.

A key proponent of legal cannabis production, Maroveke said most licensees lack guaranteed off-take agreements. An unstable market has not helped matters, she added, as prices have kept fluctuating since Zimbabwe became Africa’s second nation after Lesotho to legalize cannabis for medicinal and industrial use.

“An unstable market has been a major challenge for investors to move forward with this project in Zimbabwe and also the issue of funding. Most banks are not willing to finance cannabis because they still don’t understand it,” said the ZIHT founder and CEO.

Another obstacle for license holders is that they have to import expertise as this is a new frontier for the country. Recruiting the right skills is expensive. The cannabis regulatory framework, which she described as very strict, has also hampered the speed at which the industry is progressing.

Maroveke said the cost implications of growing medicinal cannabis are high, citing the European Union’s good manufacturing practices (GMP), which force producers to set up facilities of a high standard of hygiene and security and hire well-trained personnel.

“You will find that for a very small project, maybe even a hectare project, one would potentially pump out not less than usd1million,” said Maroveke.

So if one is to expand, there is a need for more funding, not considering money that must be paid for the GMP compliance auditors as well as inputs, like seeds, which are not only expensive but are also imported.

Though industrial hemp is generally cheaper to produce than medicinal cannabis, the cost depends on its type, she noted. If it is botanical, which is grain hemp for the CBD flower, one should be prepared to part with at least usd200 for a 5 ha project. The market determines the standards and quality that the farmer has to put in.

“So if you’re going to do hemp for fiber and grain, it’s obviously going to be cheaper; you’re looking at usd3,000–usd4,000 a hectare. But Zimbabwe’s hemp and grain industry hasn’t developed to that extent, so we don’t have many activities in those particular subsectors of industrial hemp,” she said.

The Sept. 8 roundtable was meant to find, bridge and plug the knowledge gap not only among health professionals but also other experts along the value chain. It is against that backdrop that a top Zimbabwean pharmaceutical supplier, New Avakash International, awarded scholarships to 100 health personnel to undergo training to make them more conversant with cannabis.

At the moment, local varieties are at the research stage. Due to the dictates of the market, buyers direct farmers toward the genetics they want, which at this stage are all imported. As a result, roundtable participants called for more investment in research and development and the development of local growing and processing expertise. As the industry tries to find its place, Maroveke said the government should support it through tax breaks and other incentives for cannabis value addition to be accelerated.

She said Zimbabwe will only realize the gains from cannabis once production kicks off and the export markets are stable and guaranteed.

Former Zimbabwe Tobacco Research Board (TRB) CEO Dahlia Garwe noted that the country leapt in headfirst without conducting proper market research.

“We were supposed to look at what kind of varieties we should be growing and where exactly the material will end. We have a lot of cases where people grew cannabis, but they don’t know what to do with it,” she said.

Garwe noted that the costs involved in setting up facilities for the processing of the herb and for a basic setup are as high as usd400,000. For a facility that is compliant with all the necessary health requirements, the costs can be about usd3 million.

With regards to research that is underway, she said experts are looking for locally adapted germplasm, with the TRB going around the country to identify varieties adapted to the local environment. After that, they would breed local varieties and material from elsewhere to come up with varieties that are most suitable for Zimbabwe.

“That is ongoing work. It will obviously take a few years before we get to a point where we say we have locally adapted varieties,” she said.

However, this is not to say varieties developed elsewhere can’t do well in Zimbabwe, “but that’s where the research comes in, where you’re actually evaluating varieties coming from elsewhere and you see whether they actually work or not.”

Speaking while commissioning a usd27 million medicinal cannabis project by Swiss Bioceuticals in May 2022, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa expressed frustration over the slow investment by licensees.

“It is disappointing that since 2018, only 15 out of 57 entities issued with cannabis licenses are operational,” he said. “Such licenses should not be held for speculative purposes, and those not using them risk government invoking the ‘use it or lose it’ principle.”

Former Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board chairperson Monica Chinamasa said farmers are still waiting for the ongoing research on varieties that are suitable for the local climate.

“We are still waiting for the TRB to guide us on this matter,” she said.

The EU requires GMP and good agricultural collection practices certificates to be in place before a cannabis producer can venture into that business. The financial implications for applying for the certification are huge for some Zimbabwean investors, said Munyaradzi Shamhudzarir of Voedsel Cannabis, one of the few Zimbabwe-owned companies to have planted cannabis.

“The process of getting these certifications is also very long—at least three years before you can complete all the audits and get certification,” he said.

October 3, 2022

Zimbabwe: Record Tobacco Area Expected

Industry representatives expect Zimbabwe’s tobacco farmers to plant a record hectarage of leaf this season as sales of seed soar, reports The Herald.

As of Sept. 2, 2022, at least 925 kg of tobacco seed with the capacity to cover 184,999 ha was sold, according to the Tobacco Research Board. This would be the largest hectarage ever planted if all the seed sold is sown.

Planting of irrigated tobacco began on Sept. 1, 2022, according to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB). The TIMB stated that it has designed a monitoring system for contractors’ compliance to help relieve farmers’ anxiety over contract farming agreements.

“As the 2022/2023 season commences, TIMB is working toward standardizing the inputs package offered by contractors to growers,” said Chelesani Moyo, TIMB public relations officer.

“We have come up with a compliance administration framework that every registered contractor should meet. This stipulates the minimum inputs package for both small[-scale] and large-scale growers. The conditions also include the last date for inputs distribution for those who are contracted.”

“The pricing of tobacco being determined at the auction floors through a transparent system is justified as the grower is protected from any unfair pricing by the contractor who stands guided by the previous day grade price matrix obtained from the auction floors,” Moyo added.

September 7, 2022

Zimbabwe: More Money From Less Tobacco

Zimbabwe has sold 201.05 million kg of tobacco worth US$614.27 million since the marketing season opened in March, reports The Star, citing statistics from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board.

While being close to matching last year’s output, the value of the crop sold so far this year has surpassed last year’s figure, reflecting firmer prices due to good quality leaf. During the same period in 2021, Zimbabwe’s tobacco growers sold 207.18 million kg for US$578.78 million.

Despite being grown under difficult conditions characterized by erratic rainfall, the seasonal price averaged above US$3 per kg compared to US$2.79 per kg last year.

Ninety-five percent of Zimbabwe’s tobacco crop is grown under the contract system. Only 5 percent of farmers self-finance their crop production, which they then sell through auction floors.

Zimbabwe’s tobacco auction season officially closed July 20, but contract sales are still ongoing.

August 22, 2022

Tag: Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s attempt to diversify into cannabis is proving more challenging than some anticipated.