Unilever Tea Tanzania Limited (UTT) has invested a total of Sh18 billion in setting up a state-of-the-art tea processing factory at Njombe, the company said on Monday.
UTT Managing Director, Ashton Eastman, made the announcement, while addressing journalists who accompanied him to visit a tea farmers’ factory in Mufindi where the money was invested as part of the company’s implementation of the commitment that it made to the government, when it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Agriculture in 2013.
After raising farmers’ incomes in Mufindi, the company now wants to replicate the same scheme in Njombe: “We want to build on the Mufindi experience,” he said.
According to Eastman, the factory was commissioned in March 2018. UTT has spent a total of SH18 billion (US$7.92 million); 70% of the green leaf will be supplied by small-scale farmers.
The money, he said, does not include what the company has invested in its 400-hectare Njombe estate, which provides the remaining 30% of the factory’s green leaf requirements.
