Ghana President Akufo-Addo promises to revive Komenda Sugar Factory by April 2022

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has promised the chiefs and people of the Komenda Traditional area that the Komenda Sugar Factory will be fully operational in April 2022.

According to him, some civil works are currently ongoing at the site and by the end of March, they will be completed.

“On the sugar factory, some civil works are being done there and hopefully by the end of March, it will be completed. The Indians are in and doing some work and so by April, production would have begun at the sugar factory,” he said while speaking to Komenda Traditional Council at the Jubilee House.

A Ghanaian-Indian company, Park Agrotech Ghana Limited, is the new investor who will take over the operations of the factory.

The government in 2019 said the company was expected to inject $28 million into the factory between 2020 and 2023.

$11 million was to go into sugarcane cultivation, $6 million to upgrade plant and machinery and $11 million as working capital to bring the ailing factory back on its feet.

The Ghana-based company is a subsidiary of the Skylark Group of Companies of India, one of the largest integrated farming businesses in India.

The Komenda Sugar Factory was built at a cost of $35 million from an Indian EXIM Bank facility.

It was inaugurated by then-President John Mahama in May 2016 but stopped operations no long after.

With a capacity to crush 1,250 tonnes of sugarcane per day, the factory was expected to change Ghana’s dependence on sugar imports. As of 2016, Ghana’s annual sugar requirement was estimated at 375,000 tonnes.

The factory was also expected to generate energy for its production activities and produce by-products such as molasses for the alcohol industry.

After years of dormancy, the government, in June 2020, said the ban on foreign travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected the processes of reviving the Komenda Sugar Factory.

A year before the pandemic, Cabinet approved Park Agrotech as the strategic investor to revive the factory after a technical audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers.