MARRAKESH: Sudan's Kenana Sugar Company expects its raw cane sugar capacity to grow to 700,000 tons from 400,000 tons within a year as it launches a new project by the White Nile, a company official said. The extra output will help supply local refineries for domestic consumption and make them less reliant on imports, but could also be exported to the Middle East, said Hassan Hashim Erwa, marketing manager at Kenana Sugar. "We are looking now to fill the domestic market and then we will think about how to expand to potential customers in the Middle East," Erwa told Reuters at an International Sugar Organization (ISO) meeting in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. The first phase of the White Nile project would add about 250-300,000 tons of cane sugar production within a year, with a second phase taking it to 550,000 tons perhaps two years later, he said. Erwa said Kenana's cane sugar production would fall below 400,000 tons in the 2009-2010 season, without giving a reason. "Plantings (for the 2010-11 season) will be very good and we should increase our productivity," he said. "The rain has started and, coupled with better irrigation, things are very good." Kenana's biggest shareholders are the Sudanese government with 35.63 percent, the Kuwait Investment Authority with 30.5 percent and the government of Saudi Arabia with 10.92 percent, according to the firm's Web site. Sudan has four other, state-owned factories able to produce around 370,000 tonnes of sugar, said Erwa. Middle Eastern investors are pouring money into Africa's biggest country by area to help secure future supplies for the region. Earlier this year, Kenana and Egypt's Beltone Private Equity launched a $1 billion agricultural investment fund. Kenana also produces the fuel ethanol from molasses, all of which is sold in the European Union. "We want to increase our production to 200 million liters ... from 65 million now, within three years," Erwa said.
