Tongaat Hulett, is in the throes of a life and death struggle.
Image: Supplied
Tongaat Hulett, is in the throes of a life and death struggle. The giant sugar conglomerate is in serious financial difficulties and has been placed on business rescue. If no one comes forward to save it, it will be declared bankrupt and placed in liquidation.
Who would have expected a company that once dominated the sugar cane industry in KZN and, as far afield as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Eswatini, Botswana group and Namibia, to be on its knees, begging for help?
The Tongaat Hulett empire was built on the back -breaking labour of the 1860 indentured Indian settlers who were made to slave from morn till dusk in the sugar cane fields.
They transformed the rolling hills along the coast with its lush indigenous vegetation into vast sugar cane fields and made their masters, the sugar barons, fat and rich.
As the company grew and expanded its portfolio from sugar production to property and other industrial activities, it became unwieldy and complacent. Mismanagement, fraud and corruption began to take its toll on the company. To compound its problems, cheap imported sugar began flooding the market, putting pressure on its profit margin and sinking it deeper into the red.
The company's business practitioners ,( BRCs ) filed for provisional liquidation but the government- funded Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) stepped in with a R 200 million injection to keep it afloat and the mills running.
Tongaat Hulett has a huge work force (28 000 to 40 000 workers ) and 18000 cane growers are reliant on its mills. Has karma at last caught up with Tongaat Hullet for its exploitation of labour? While some may say it is now reaping what it sowed, we must not forget that it will be a bitter pill to swallow as thousands of workers will be left unemployed if Tongaat Hullet goes under.
THYAGARAJ MARKANDAN
Kloof