Private company offers to buy stake in Zambia's state fertiliser firm

Nyiombo Investments Limited has offered to buy equity in Nitrogen Chemicals Zambia Limited (NCZ) to help revamp the struggling manufacturing company.

Country director for Malawi, Jomo Matululu, said Nyiombo Investments was eager to see NCZ start to satisfy the local demand for fertiliser and also supply the region. “We wish to see NCZ start to produce and fulfill the increasing demand for fertiliser. We are ready to buy equity in the company so that we help support it,” Matululu said in an interview at the just ended 81st Agriculture and Commercial Show in Lusaka.

He said Nyiombo Investments had the market infrastructure and distribution expertise it could use to help revitalise NCZ. The company currently imports and distributes about 70,000 tonnes of chemical fertilisers in Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique.

Matululu said Nyiombo Investments wanted to help supply fertiliser to small-scale farmers who form the bulk of its clientele, besides major contractors like Government under the fertiliser support programme (FSP) and the Programme Against Malnutrition. He said the company was working on increasing the distribution franchise to Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zimbabwe, using Zambia as the distribution hub.

Matululu said the company had imported over 20,000 metric tonnes of compound D and urea fertiliser for the 2007/8 farming season from the Balkan states in Europe. He said the fertiliser was already in the country in the storage depots and the company was just waiting for the government to announce the winner of the tender for the FSP.

Daily Mail