Atiak Sugar Factory reveals that it has received close to 50% of the equipment required to revamp the company, whose operation was suspended due to limited sugar cane production and fire outbreaks that destroyed property worth millions of shillings.
During the media tour at the Atiak Sugar Factory, Ahmed Mahmood, the director of operations at the factory, confirmed the development, saying that the machines acquired will help to start the project up to 85%, which in turn will improve its productivity.
“Among the equipment provided by funding from the Uganda Development Cooperation (UDC) are four fire trucks, which will help to avert fire out breaks in the future. And putting up fire lines. Among others,” Mahmood said.
Mahmood said that the goal of the factory is to go forward in fire prevention since UDC has provided four fire trucks for irrigation of sugar cane both in the dry and wet seasons. The process will go on in order to reduce the calamity of fire.
Furthermore, Mahmood claimed that in order to increase yield, an innovative irrigation scheme encompassing 4000 square acres of sugarcane plantations with 62 automated irrigation command centres will be implemented.
He noted that the equipment provided by the Uganda Development Bank at the Atiak sugar factory is expected to be 75 percent mechanised, and the factory is going to recruit drivers and operators that will come in handy. Those machines will be working in shifts when production resumes.
The factory looks forward to recruiting the majority of the workers from the local communities in the Acholi sub-region. And this has raised hope across Northern Uganda, which will benefit a lot.
Atiak sugar cane production is jointly owned by Horyal Investment Holding Company Limited and the government of Uganda, which owns about 44.4% of the shares.
The factory, which was launched by President Yoweri Museveni in 2020 in Amuru District, had stopped production after a combination of wildfires and the attack of the COVID-19 pandemic that had brought it to its knees.
