WESTERN Cashew Nut Industries managing director Moses Shimbilimbili says the company requires K22 million to invest in the plantation of 2.7 million new cashew trees that will result in harvesting 13,500 metric tons of cashew nuts per annum. In an interview on Friday, Mr Shimbilimbili said the project is expected to generate K133 million per annum if global price of cashew nuts remain constant. He said the project which is scheduled to start this month is expected to create about 10,000 jobs. “If everything goes according to plan, we will start the project next month [February] and create 3,000 factory jobs and at farm level we will create 7,000 jobs. This crop is export-driven and we project an annual income of K133 million if existing prices of betweenUS$7.00 and US$10.00 per kg remain constant,” he said. He, however, said the project is anticipated to take two years to materialise. “We are able to process 1,000 metric tons of nuts per annum but, this is beyond our production capacity of 2,900 metric tons per annum. This is because most of the trees were planted before 1985, are very old and can’t produce required quantities to feed into our equipment. “… We have plans to plant 2.7 million new trees whose seedlings were gotten from Mozambique and Tanzania and have a maturity period of two years,” Mr Shimbilimbili said. He said the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) under the industrial clusters and value chain programme gave the firm a K2.8 million loan to buy equipment and assets from the defunct Zambia Cashew Nut company. The company is Zambian owned and it has 13 shareholders who bought off assets and equipment from Zambia Cashew nut company. Mr Shimbilimbili said the project would cover all the plantations owned by the company including smallholder farmers that would supply their produce to the company. The company, which has a factory and 2,000 hectares of plantation in Mongu, also has plantation in Lukulu and Senanga with an area of 1,000 and 600 hectares respectively. In Kalabo, the hectarage is 140 hectares bought from CEEC funding.