22 November 2007
Maputo — The glassware company Vidreira, located in the southern Mozambican city of Matola, which has been paralysed for the best part of a decade, will resume production in mid- 2008, according to the National Director of Industry, Sergio Macamo.
Vidreira told AIM that a South African group, which he did not name, is taking over the factory, the only plant in Mozambique which can produce bottles.
Macamo declined to say how much money the South Africans would invest in Vidreira "because preparations for the relaunch are still under way. But it is a fact that everything will be ready for this relaunch in mid-2008".
Vidreira was once state-owned, but production ground to a halt during the war of destabilisation. In the privatisations of the 1990s, Vidreira was sold off (in December 1996) to the Portuguese glassware company Barboso e Almeida, who promised to invest ten million US dollars in rehabilitating the factory.
Production resumed in 1998, but Barboso e Almeida did not stay the course. The Portuguese group abandoned Vidreira which halted production once more.
According to Macamo, when Vidreira is again rehabilitated it will provide bottles for the major Mozambican consumers of glassware - notably, the beer company Cervejas de Mocambique, and the local branch of Coca-Cola.
In 1998, the Vidreira furnaces were said to be capable of producing 120 tonnes of glass a day, and of supplying five per cent of the entire southern African glassware market.
Reactivating Vidreira is part of the government's strategy to find new owners for industries which, although currently paralysed, remain viable. Macamo estimated that there are 300 such factories, large and small, scattered across the country.
One such factory that will reopen in 2008 is the Maputo steel rolling mill, CSM (known, in the days of state ownership, as CIFEL). Mittal Steel of South Africa, a subsidiary of the world's largest steel company, ArcelorMittal, is investing about 20 million dollars in CSM, under an agreement signed with the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
