Agriculture
New seed production plant launched in Bethlehem─── SABRINA DEAN 15:11 Mon, 16 Jan 2017
Bethlehem - A new seed production plant that can produce up to 6000 tons of seed per hour has been launched in Bethlehem.
The seed company Sensako says the new plant will be used for production of winter cereal seeds such as wheat, as well as seed for summer grains such as maize, soya and sunflower.
Director of research and development at Sensako, Francois Koekemoer, says in the past they made use of contractors.
“That means if a person starts off with limited quantities of seed, by the time you get it back, seed from competitors is already on the farm.
“So we had to invest in our own seed production plant, which we then developed. This is being officially opened today. It will also be able to handle maize seed, sunflower and soya seed.”
Koekemoer says they have entered into a joint venture with the agribusiness VKB to ensure efficient marketing.
“We felt with the fact that we are now producing our own range of summer crop seeds, we would need a whole new approach.
“We entered into negotiations with VKB and will be developing a joint venture with them that will be known as SenSeeds. This will then be used to market our products at commercial level in future.”
- OFM News
