By JOWIT SALUSEKI –
THE Mwinilunga District Council has appealed to the central government to re-open the defunct Mwinilunga Cannery which was once the sole pineapple factory in the country.
District council chairperson Allan Kanyemba  said the government should revive the factory.
Mwinilunga cannery had a capacity to produce 24,000 cases of juice per annum but the firm closed down at the dawn of privatisation in the early1990s.
With a ready market provided by the cannery industry, hundreds of farmers especially in Ikeleng’i and Mwinilunga districts of North-Western Province relied on the firm to sell their pineapples cultivating large farms of the fruit.
In an interview Mr Kanyemba said that the revival of the cannery in Mwinilunga will reinvigorate the pineapple industry and boost the economy at regional and national level.
He said the pineapple sector in the area had faced sustainability challenges since the collapse of the processing industry, which discouraged most farmers from growing the fruit on large-scale basis.
“The revival of the cannery in Mwinilunga will reinvigorate the pineapple industry and boost the economy at regional and national level.
“Government should engage the private sector to revive the business and a joint venture partnership could also be one model of revitalizing the factory’’, he noted.
He said farmers in both Ikeleng’i and Mwinilunga Districts have the potential to feed the cannery with pineapples once the State finds an investor who can revamp the firm.
Mr Kanyemba said most farmers in Ikeleng’i and Mwinilunga District are pineapple growers and, therefore, reviving the pineapple industry will motivate them to engage in growing pineapples on a larger scale.
‘’ Pineapple farmers in Mwinilunga and Ikeleng’i who were there in the late1970s and are still around… he said.
He said reviving the industry will motivate farmers in the area who grow other citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons to cultivate huge chunks of land.