South Africa: Financial Troubles Spread for South Africa s Largest Sugar Processer

On October 28, 2022, Tongaat Hullet’s management announced that they opted to go into voluntary business rescue due to the company’s severe levels of financial distress. On Tuesday November 1, Tongaat Hullet missed the deadline to pay R401 million ($22.9 million) for cane delivered by 4,300 growers in September. The company, however, managed to pay 4,000 small-scale growers and are left with outstanding payment to commercial growers. Raw sugar production is expected to fall by 2 percent to 2 million metric tons (MT) in the 2022/23 market year (MY), due to a reduction in the quantity of cane delivered to mills, limited crushing capacity as a result of the closure of two sugar mills, and a decline in mill efficiencies.