Finding The Sweet Spot In The Sugar Industry

Mamongae Mahlare, managing director of Illovo Sugar SA, discusses the economic challenges in the sugar industry, and how government legislation is impacting business.

- David McKay

hot potatoes have become Mamongae Mahlare’s thing. Having worked for years in the alcohol industry helping manage the Tanzania and Mozambique businesses of industrial giant SAB Miller, Mahlare has – since March last year – been managing director of Illovo Sugar SA.

As with its intoxicating brethren, as well as tobacco, sugar has been fingered as one of society’s evils. Clearly, it’s a subject Mahlare gets asked about a lot. “The excessive use of any product is bad for you,” says Mahlare, brushing off the criticism that ‘drinking responsibly’ – the most infamously oxymoronic of industry paylines – has its parallel in similar-sounding sugar campaigns.

“The sugar debate is very complex, and it’s become highly politicised. So, it becomes a very dangerous platform to say, ‘it’s healthy for you’; it’s ‘better for you’. It is just a natural product and what we do encourage is responsible consumption of the ingredient,” she says.

Societal questions aside, there are presently also a raft of economic pressures in the world’s sugar industry which has made its farming, refining and marketing a bitter pill.

This price decline is a function of enormous amounts of excess product that’s available in the export market – itself a function of the declining consumerism.

“There has been a trend towards less sugar consumption, particularly in Europe and most of the developed market for now over 15 years,” says Mahlare. That has hit global demand heavily. “Now what is also an important function of what we call the global price is that most of the sugar-producing countries have highly protected markets and therefore it is difficult to export into those countries.