It has been just over a week since Tongaat Huletts announced that they were jacking up the price of sugar. Well they are back again with another hike. The price of the sweet stuff just marginally went up again. Sadly the last hike was unable to improve supplies much. There was a trickle of sugar in some supermarkets but there were always limits to how much you could buy and shops quickly ran out. At the same time prices went down from $3.00 USD to $2.50 and even $2.00 on the black market.

According to Tongaat Hulett the price of a 2kg pack now has a recommended price of $140.45 up from $134.42 ZWL.

The black market still remains the main source of sugar

It is never clear how locally made goods always end up on the black market. However, if you want unlimited quantities of sugar you will have to part with anything between $19.00 to $25.00 USD per case (20 kg pack). Most shops don’t seem to have any and the only one that we saw with sugar was FoodWorld and they were limiting sales to one 2kg pack per customer.

It is winter and most people are drinking tea, Zimbabwe’s favourite beverage more than they do during other seasons resulting in a seasonal spike in demand. At the same time sugar companies see more profit in sanitisers whose chief ingredient is ethanol which is mainly produced using fermentation of sugar.