NYUSI INAUGURATES LARGEST EUCALYPTUS NURSERY IN AFRICA

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Tuesday inaugurated the largest eucalyptus nursery in Africa, at Lua, in Ile district, in the central province of Zambezia.The eucalyptus trees grown in the nursery will eventually be used to produce paper in an investment by the company Portucel-Mocambique. 80 per cent of the shares in this company are held by the Portuguese paper giant Portucel Soporcel, and the remaining 20 per cent by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the member of the World Bank group which focuses on funding for the private sector in developing countries. Portucel Soporcel claims that this is its most modern tree nursery. It covers 7.5 hectares, and has an installed production capacity of more than 12 million plants a year. Currently it employs more than 130 Mozambican workers.Total investment in the nursery was over 300 million meticais (about 7.5 million US dollars, at current exchange rates). But Portucel says this is only the start. As the project is ramped up towards production of paper the total investment will increase to over 96 billion meticais (2.4 billion dollars). This is expected to create at least 7,000 jobs in Zambezia and Manica provinces, where the trees will be planted. The plantations will cover 160,000 hectares in Zambezia and 270,000 hectares in Manica.

 The project will take a long time to reach maturity. Portucel’s factory producing cellulose, the raw material for paper, will not be complete until the end of 2023. At the inauguration ceremony, according to the independent television station STV, Nyusi told the crowd “this undertaking is yours, and you are the ones who are going to work here”. The jobs at the nursery were overwhelmingly held by Mozambicans – Nyusi said he had only found one Portuguese technician training the Mozambican workers.“If you learn quickly, he will go home to his family, and you will do the work yourselves”, the President said.He praised Portucel for locating the nursery in a rural area. Nyusi was sure that some voices would be raised complained “Ile is just bush” – but it was where the people lived, and he urged the residents to take good care of the nursery.He warned that investors are unlikely to stay in Mozambique, if their projects are not safe. “If some smart guy, some scoundrel, lights a match and burns this all down, will you have jobs?”, Nyusi asked.He praised Portucel for its courage in investing in Mozambique, “particularly in this province which is in such need of investment”. Nyusi said the Portucel forestry and paper project fitted perfectly into the government’s five year programme for the 2015-2019 period, and would have “multiplier effects on the Mozambican agricultural and industrial fabric”. The project “will certainly promote the modernisation and industrialization of our economy”. The chairperson of Portucel Soporcel, Pedro Quieros Pereira, said that the company does not intend to displace any communities already living in the areas where the trees will be planted, and that a third of the area requested by Portucel will be allocated for community use.