Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia – NCZ has confirmed that it has delivered over 80% of the tonnage of fertilizer that the company is supplying to Southern Province and expect to conclude delivering in the both D-compound and Urea in next two weeks.
NCZ Marketing and Sales Manager Cleopatra Chanda also confirmed that NCZ only manufactures D-Compound while Urea is imported. She further disclosed that the company has utilized some of the money injected by IDC for working capital to produce and deliver the Southern Province fertilizer order.
When asked on what progress has been made on procuring a fertilizer blending plant which was financed in July 2021 by IDC, Chanda said the company has initiated and is in the process of procuring a blending plant which will make it possible for the company to blend fertilizer once the machine is in the country adding that the machine is likely to arrive early next year 2022.
In July this year 2021, the Industrial Development Corporation – IDC injected a total of K684 million (about $31 million at the time) into NCZ to enable the company acquire a modern blending plant as well as boost its production capacity.
IDC Group CEO Mateyo Kaluba at the time of investment stated that of the total amount invested, K638 million was for working capital support for the production of fertilizer to enable the company consistently supply the commodity to the market, while K45.6 million was to enable procurement of a modern fertilizer blending plant.
The NCZ marketing manager told ZBT that NCZ has so far delivered over 80% of the tonnage of fertilizer that the company is supplying in Southern Province. She said the company is delivering both D-Compound and Urea and is expected to finish distributing the fertilizer in the next one to two weeks.
Chanda mentioned that issuance of fertilizer to the farmers is currently going on in Southern Province and the distribution is going well noting that there are no challenges being experienced. See ZBT article on IDC $31million investment into Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia – NCZ https://zambianbusinesstimes.com/k638m-investment-into-ncz-to-cut-need-for-imports/
Fertilizer imports continued to be one of the major foreign exchange drainers in the Zambian economy due to the big volumes ordered as well as bulk transportation costs. Analyst have however contented that local manufacturing of the commodity remains one of the viable routes for Zambia to take.
The late founding President of Zambia – Dr. Kenneth Kaunda’s government that got independence for Zambia realized that importing fertilizer was unsustainable and set up NCZ but successive governments after that from MMD, PF and now UPND have continued to opt to import. This is despite not availing the public any technical and financial report that support their decisions or policies to opt to import fertilizer than produce locally.
