Type Parastatal Headquarters Lugazi, Uganda Number of employees 7,000+ (2006) | Founded 1924 Products Sugar | |
Industry Manufacture & Distribution of Sugar | ||
Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (SCOUL), is a sugar manufacturer in Uganda, the third-largest economy in the East African Community.
Contents
Overview
SCOUL is the third-largest manufacturer of sugar in Uganda, producing an estimated 60,000 metric tonnes annually, accounting for approximately 17 percent of national output. Kakira Sugar Works, in Kakira, Jinja District, is the largest sugar manufacturer in the country.
The sugar produced is marketed in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. SCOUL is undergoing renovations and expansion to increase output to 100,000 metric tonnes annually by 2013.
History
Nanji Kalidas Mehta is the founder of the Mehta Group of Companies, a Mumbai-based conglomerate, with business interests spanning four continents, namely Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. In 1900, at age thirteen, he left his native India and sailed to Eastern Africa, settling in Uganda near the town of Lugazi, Buikwe District in the Central Region. Over the next thirty to forty yearsm Mehta travelled back and forth between India and East Africa 46 times. During that period, he established in Uganda cotton ginneries, a sugar plantation, a sugar factory, tea plantations, and coffee plantations. The sugar factory, established in 1924, was the founding of what today is known as SCOUL. The Mehta Family lost their Ugandan assets in 1972, when Idi Amin dispossessed all Asians of their businesses and personal property. Those assets were returned in the 1980s with the change of government in the country. Since then, the family has rehabilitated their businesses and started new ones as well.
Location
The main factory of the company is located in the town of Lugazi, approximately 48 kilometres (30 mi), by road, east of Kampala, the capital and the largest city of Uganda. The coordinates of the SCOUL factory are 0°22'59.0"N, 32°56'27.0"E (Latitude:0.383056; Longitude:32.940833).
Ownership
SCOUL is a subsidiary of the Mehta Group, a diversified industrial and investment conglomerate based in Mumbai, employing over 10,000 people in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. As of August 2011, the shareholding in SCOUL was as depicted in the table below: