JOHANNESBURG - There may be hope on the horizon for struggling Tongaat Hulett and the thousands of workers whose jobs hang in the balance.
A new grower-led consortium, GrowerCo, has launched a last-minute bid to keep the mills and refinery operational and prevent the collapse of one of South Africa’s biggest sugar producers.
The proposal aims to protect an estimated 40,000 jobs and stabilise an industry that supports thousands of farming families and rural communities.
Pratish Sharma, a grower who supplies Tongaat Hulett's Maidstone Mill, said it has been under tremendous financial pressure over a number of years.
"We've experienced a lot of new things for us, such as the whole process of business rescue, how to interact with a company under business rescue. And we finally got to a stage now where the business rescue practitioners believe that there is no other option other than liquidation," he said.
"We as the growers, of course, cannot sit by and accept that as what the natural outcome from the business rescue point of view is.
"We have put together a proposal which would show a grower-led consortium taking over the equity structure of the company. We believe it's in the best interest of all the stakeholders within the value chain to have a fully integrated value chain whereby the people who actually create the process, the products or rather create the material for processing, would be fully integrated into the value chain and ensure greater sustainability."