Parliament calls for sugar industry reform after value chain inquiry

Published 1 October 2026 Updated 1 October 2026

Zimbabwe's Parliament has called for a broad package of reforms to the sugar industry following an inquiry into the sugar value chain. The Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce, chaired by Clemence Chiduwa, tabled its report in late September 2026 after visits to the Triangle and Hippo Valley estates and hearings with growers, millers, Delta Corporation, the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), and government ministries.

The committee's central finding

The committee's headline concern is market structure. Zimbabwe has only two sugar mills, Hippo Valley and Triangle, both held under the Tongaat Hulett group, which the report contrasts with South Africa and Egypt, each of which has more than 14 mills. The committee concluded that this concentration leaves out-grower farmers, who cultivate around 44% of the roughly 46,000 hectares under cane, dependent on a single buyer for their crop.

Costs facing growers

Finance: out-growers rely on contract farming and, according to the committee, pay interest rates of up to 60% because their land tenure is not accepted by banks as security
Inputs: around 98% of fertiliser raw materials are imported
Water: ZINWA charges US$6.82 per megalitre, and the committee found farmers were billed on allocated volumes rather than actual consumption. Lowveld cane requires roughly 15 megalitres per hectare per year, and the report cites inadequate conveyance infrastructure and illegal upstream abstraction as limiting supply
Electricity: the committee flagged power costs and outages as a drag on yields, with ZETDC telling the inquiry it is deploying smart-grid technology to prioritise mills and irrigators during load shedding
Transport: cane haulage was reported at US$44 per five-tonne bundle, with road charges of US$175 per load following the decline of rail freight. Farmers at Mkwasine face particularly long hauls to the mills

Division of proceeds and pricing

The report also examined the division of proceeds (DoP) between growers and millers, which it records as currently 80.5% to farmers and 19.5% to millers. Growers told the committee the arrangement lacks transparency because millers control the weighing of delivered cane.

On pricing, the committee noted that local sugar sells at around US$890 to US$900 per tonne against an import parity of about US$600. It recorded Delta Corporation's evidence that the 2024 sugar tax raised beverage prices by 15% to 45%, and that around 90,000 tonnes of sugar went uncommitted in 2025 as a result. The report also questioned the US$9 to US$10 per tonne cost of mandatory Vitamin A fortification borne by producers.

What Parliament has ordered

Amend the 1964 Sugar Act by 31 October 2026
Establish a new sugar mill at Mkwasine
Recapitalise the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) to restore rail haulage of cane
Introduce concessional loans for industry players at interest rates below 15% by December 2026
Move ZINWA to consumption-based water billing and rehabilitate conveyance infrastructure to cut water losses by 30% by 31 December 2026
Direct ZINWA and Zesa Holdings to prioritise reliable water and electricity supply to the sugar industry
Pursue solar-powered irrigation in the Lowveld under the Advanced Net Metering initiative

What happens next

The directives carry deadlines that fall within weeks. Whether government tables an amendment to the Sugar Act by the end of October, and how it responds to the call for a third mill at Mkwasine, will shape the industry's direction as it enters the first year of the Zimbabwe Sugarcane Industry Development Plan 2026 to 2035. The findings also give formal weight to grievances raised by out-growers during the 2026 cane price dispute earlier this year.

Read the company profiles on the industry players page, learn about out-growers and the Lowveld on the sugarcane growing page, revisit the 2026 cane price dispute, read about the ten-year development plan, or return to the Industry News index.