State of the Nation: SA Canegrowers Association welcomes President’s call to buy local sugar 

12 February 2021 

The South African Canegrowers Association NPC (SA Canegrowers) welcomes the call by President Cyril Ramaphosa in last night’s State of the Nation Address to buy local sugar. If all South Africans commit to buying the quality local sugar that our nation’s land and cane growers produce, the one million livelihoods that depend on the industry will be safeguarded. 

SA Canegrowers launched its buy local campaign, Home Sweet Home, in December 2020. Home Sweet Home is intended to highlight the importance of buying local sugar, and the devastating impact that cheap foreign imports has had on the jobs and livelihoods supported by the local sugar industry. 

The industry’s 22,949 growers, of which 21,581 are small-scale growers, directly employ more than 65,000 workers. They also create 270,000 indirect jobs across the country, supporting a total of one million livelihoods.

We can announce today that our Home Sweet Home campaign has been well received by South African consumers. Our preliminary findings show that sales of local sugar have increased by 12% year on year. We are hopeful that the President’s call will embed these early signs of shifted behaviour by committed South Africans.

Furthermore, to sustain these positive changes and increase jobs in industry, it is also important that Government’s commitments under the Sugar Masterplan are put into action. Under Action Commitment One of the plan, Government has undertaken to promote the use of local sugar by all its departments and state-owned entities. Other stakeholders, including retailers and wholesalers, have committed to procuring 80% of their sugar locally, with this amount rising to 95% in the third year. 

Taken together, these commitments have the potential to bring to fruition a key objective of the Masterplan: restoring the local market. With action on these commitments, together we can restore an initial 150,000 tons of sugar demand to the local sugar industry in the first two years, with the goal of increasing this to 300,000 tons in year three, as set out in the plan.

SA Canegrowers will continue to work together with government and other industry stakeholders to ensure that the early successes of Home Sweet Homesucceed in sustainably revitalizing our critical local industry and jobs. 

Issued by Thabi Ndhlovu on behalf of SA Canegrowers Association, 12 February 2021