Mumias Sugar Company has plunged further into negative territory after posting a Ksh 15.1 billion loss in the year ending June 2018, which is more than double the Ksh 6.8 billion loss reported in 2017.
Despite receiving billions of shillings in Treasury bailouts, the sugarcane miller attributes the deteriorating financial situation to shortage of sugarcane, which affected operations; a 101% spike in impairment charges to the machinery and plant from Ksh 2.6 billion to Ksh 4.9 billion.
In the past, the miller has blamed sugarcane poaching to its woes, which saw its sugar miss from supermarket shelves between August 2016 and October 2017.
According to Mumias Sugar, during the year under review, cane deliveries dropped by 32% from 417,347 tonnes in 2017 to 283,435 tonnes in 2018. Annual turnover also went down from Ksh 2.09 billion to Ksh 1.37 billion.
“The acute cane shortage significantly hindered the plant throughputs with cane delivered dropping by 32 per cent to 283,435 tonnes compared with 417,347 in the last financial year,” board chairman Kennedy Ngumbau said.