Malawi will now be able to produce and sell fridge free margarine following the inauguration of a $1.6 million plant at Sunseed Oils Limited in Kanengo.<\/p>\n
The margarine has been branded Sunspread Margarine<\/p>\n
The project is one of success stories of the Malawi Innovation Challenge Fund (MICF) which provides grant funding for innovative inclusive business projects by private sector companies operating in the country.<\/p>\n
MICF was established in 2014 and is jointly supported by Uni ted Nations Development Programme, Department for International Development, KFW and International Fund for Agricultural Development.<\/p>\n
Sunseed Oil Limited fridge free margarine project was identified following its involvement of smallholder farmers in the supply chain for raw materials.<\/p>\n
Sunseed Managing Director, Wassim Kassam, said Sunspread Margarine will offer import substitution to imported fridge free margarine.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll fridge free margarine sold in the country are imported and as a country, we are losing a lot of foreign exchange. Sunspread is here to address the importation gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from that, the margarine has a direct impact on the lives of smallholder sunflower farmers in the country as 60 percent of the raw materials is directly supplied by farmers who have been integrated into the supply chain,\u201d Kassam said.<\/p>\n
He further said being the first locally produced fridge free margarine, Sunspread adheres to international standards so that it is able to compete effectively on both local and foreign markets.<\/p>\n
Ministry of Industry and Trade Director of Administration and Finance, Joseph Mkandawire, said the programme will go a long way in alleviating poverty in the country and create more jobs.<\/p>\n
He said the government realises the importance of the oil seed products hence its inclusion in the National Export Strategy (NES).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe private sector should take keen interest in the MICF initiative and they should be rest assured that with the Buy Malawi Strategy in place, there is an already existing market for locally produced products,\u201d Mkandawire said.<\/p>\n
DFID Head of Office, Jan Marshall, said Sunseed has taken risks to implement a project which will deliver a new innovative product.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fridge free margarine is the first of its kind in the country, which will not only earn profits for the company, but will also include poor farmers as suppliers of sunflower seed enabling them to improve their livelihood and create new jobs,\u201d Marshall said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi will now be able to produce and sell fridge free margarine following the inauguration of a $1.6 million plant at Sunseed Oils Limited in Kanengo. The margarine has been branded Sunspread Margarine The project is one of success stories of the Malawi Innovation Challenge Fund (MICF) which provides grant funding for innovative inclusive business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42224,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42218\/revisions\/42224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}