South African billionaire Robert Gumede tells the Zulu king he will turn sugarcane into fuel

Robert Gumede went to Durban on Sunday to explain to the Zulu king what he intends to do with Tongaat Hulett.

The South African businessman, whose Vision consortium took control of the 134-year-old sugar producer in June, told King Misuzulu kaZwelithini that the company will expand beyond sugar into ethanol fuel for vehicles and electricity generation. The electricity would come from sugarcane and be sold to Eskom, the state power utility.

Gumede framed the plan in terms the monarch's subjects would feel directly, telling him it would increase production and demand from cane growers in KwaZulu-Natal.

The audience matters because of who supplies the cane. KwaZulu-Natal is the centre of South African sugar production, and the Zulu monarchy holds influence over the Ingonyama Trust, which administers a substantial share of land in the province. Small-scale growers on that land feed the mills Gumede now owns.

Vision Sugar wants to expand the grower base from roughly 17,500 farmers to more than 30,000, and to double the approximately 50,000 jobs tied to the business.

The energy plan rests on three streams. Bagasse, the fibrous residue left after cane is crushed, would be burned to generate electricity for the national grid and the eThekwini municipality. Carbon dioxide from sugar processing would be converted into medical oxygen and beverage-grade industrial gas. Cane would be turned into ethanol for blending into petrol.

South Africa's sugar master plan, signed in April, targets a 4.5% ethanol blend in petrol, drawing on an annual sugar surplus of about 300,000 tonnes. That policy is what underpins the commercial case.

The approach is standard elsewhere. Brazilian and Indian producers have run co-generation plants off bagasse for decades, treating sugar and power as one business rather than two.

What forced the pivot was the price of sugar. Tongaat lost about $36 million last year as cheap Brazilian imports undercut local producers, and more than 111,000 tonnes of imported sugar arrived in South Africa in the first three months of the 2026/27 season. The industry says the sugar tariff, unchanged since 2018, no longer protects domestic mills.

Gumede's consortium bought out about $710 million, or 11.7 billion rand, of debt owed to the 13 banks exposed to Tongaat, becoming its largest secured creditor. Under the rescue agreement finalised in the Durban High Court in June, Vision converts roughly 12 billion rand of that debt into equity, and the Industrial Development Corporation provides post-commencement funding through September 2026 in exchange for a 25% stake in Vision's southern African sugar operations.

Guma Group and the IDC together hold 68% of the South African operations. Rute Moyo controls 64% of the Zimbabwean business, and the Mozambican state holds 15% of the local unit. The ownership transfer must complete by the end of September.

The regional footprint is substantial. Vision runs roughly 140,000 hectares in Zimbabwe and 300,000 in Mozambique, and the Zimbabwean operation earned more than $60 million in the year to March.

Gumede has since approached Associated British Foods about buying Illovo Sugar, valued at up to $1.1 billion. Combining Illovo with Tongaat would put more than half of South Africa's sugar milling capacity under one owner.