Associated British Foods (ABF) Sugar Chief Executive Officer Paul Kenward has outlined a sophisticated corporate strategy that balances the harsh realities of global market competitiveness with the company’s profound socio-economic role as one of Eswatini’s primary employers through .
Central to this long-term vision is a massive capital injection. ABF Sugar, the parent company to Ubombo Sugar Limited (USL), is investing over £100 million (approximately E2.4 billion) into its local operations over the next few years, funding major capital projects including a state-of-the-art power station and debottlenecking of facilities.
As technological disruption sweeps through global agriculture, in an interview held at the USL headquarters in Big bend on Tuesday, Kenward addressed the delicate equilibrium between automation and job security in Eswatini. Rather than viewing machine learning and mechanisation as a threat to livelihoods, he framed it as an inevitable transition toward more dignified, higher-value employment.
He noted that the traditional backbone of the industry, manual cane cutting, is becoming increasingly difficult to staff, mirroring global shifts.
“Cane cutting is a punishing, difficult job. To go out in the heat of the sun, to go into a field which has just been burned, to work long hours, hard physical labour to cut cane is a valuable job,” Kenward noted. “It’s a very difficult job, and I think that’s the sort of job over time, I imagine will be displaced by automation. But we’ll have different jobs available to service the chopper harvesters, to fly drones, to add value elsewhere. So I don’t think it’s the case that automation will completely remove jobs; I think it will change the balance of which jobs are available.”
Surprisingly, Kenward revealed that labour scarcity, rather than cost-cutting, is driving mechanisation. Pointing to Brazil, he noted that automation there was adopted primarily because fields could no longer attract labour. Eswatini is facing similar headwinds.
“One of our major problems we have this year is we’ve been unable to find people to cut cane,” Kenward revealed. “We’ve historically used people who’ve come into the country from Mozambique and elsewhere, but we’ve struggled to find people to do this job. Automation in that case is a response to people choosing not to do some roles. We kind of have to embrace it.”
While ABF Sugar leverages cutting-edge artificial intelligence in its European operations, Kenward maintained that Eswatini’s distinct economic landscape requires a nuanced approach.
Drawing a contrast with the UK, where he previously served as Managing Director of British Sugar, Kenward noted that British Sugar operates one of Europe’s largest factories with a night shift of just 10 people, completely run by machine learning and AI. However, a carbon-copy approach does not make economic sense for Eswatini.
“Honestly, the labour costs in the UK are much higher than they are in Eswatini (SVT). So, it makes sense for me to spend money on automating tasks in the UK, but it doesn’t make sense for me to automate here,” Kenward stated. “I want to have jobs here which people value, where people create value, where they’re paid well, and where they feel they have a real sense of fulfilment from what they do each day.”
Instead of displacing workers, the company has rolled out advanced SAP enterprise software locally, upskilling its workforce to handle digital tools and take on advanced technical roles.
“We have drone pilots here who are highly qualified and flying drones over fields to irrigate and do all sorts of exciting things. We have engineers maintaining our fleet of modern tractors and chopper harvesters. We’re creating really high-tech, valuable jobs,” he said.
Despite being a multinational corporate powerhouse, Kenward emphasized that the local operation remains deeply indigenous. Out of a massive local workforce of roughly 3,000 employees, only seven are currently on expatriate visas, primarily brought in to offer specialized technical skills for massive infrastructure undertakings, like the ongoing power station build managed by an Indian main contractor.
“Fundamentally, this is a Swazi business. I’m proud that it’s a Swazi business,” Kenward said. “It should be run by—and the people working here should be substantially from—the Kingdom, and overwhelmingly they are. We’re proud to be one of the biggest, most attractive employers, to pay fair wages, and proud that the payroll taxes that flow from that go to the treasury.”