Key stakeholders intensify drive to save Tongaat Hulett

With less than a month before the fate of Tongaat Hulett is argued in the Durban High Court, key stakeholders have intensified efforts to save KwaZulu-Natal’s sugar giant. The application to liquidate the sugar producer, brought by Tongaat Hulett’s Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs), is scheduled to be heard on April 16 and 17. The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), which has so far secured R2 billion towards saving Tongaat Hulett, is opposing the liquidation application, as is the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), which has also invested more than R2 billion into the company.

According to the BRPs, the application became the only option after Tongaat Hulett’s main investor, Vision Group Consortium, led by IT billionaire Robert Gumede, rejected an IDC condition requiring the consortium to inject an additional R200 million before further funding would be released. When the deal fell through, the Vision Group Consortium was said to have signalled that it was turning its back on Tongaat Hulett. However, Gumede — who recently held a meeting with Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini — denied that the consortium planned to disinvest.

All that the Vision Group Consortium has been requesting is for all stakeholders to work together and save Tongaat Hulett. Can Tongaat Hulett be saved? Absolutely.

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But it requires everybody to sit around the table and find a lasting solution, not put a bandage on a cancer wound. The consortium, Gumede added, has ambitious plans for the company. “We are capable of turning this business around and will be able to diversify it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.

We are not here for a quick buck. We are here to turn the business around, grow it and diversify it into energy and ethanol production,” he said.

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