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SAPPI KZN
Photo by Axel Bührmann
In 1954 an Italian consortium developed the large Saiccor industrial cellulose plant beside the river a short distance inland from the town. Many Italian immigrants and workers, mostly from the region of Friuli in Northeast Italy, followed suit, and the result is that Umkomaas probably had the largest Italian community relative to its total population of any town in Southern Africa.
Saiccor has for some time been a controversial plant. It was purchased by international pulp and paper giant Sappi in 1988, and while it continues to provide jobs for about 1200 workers, and a livelihood for their dependents, concerns were raised as early as the 1990s over Saiccor’s adverse effect on asthmatic children at the nearby Umkomaas Drift School. In 1999 Saiccor paid for the relocation of the school.
Additionally, a large amount of effluent is pumped out to sea, and major extensions of this effluent pipe were carried out in 1987 and 1999, though Saiccor maintained for many years that the effluent was largely harmless. A well-known act was when Saiccor chief executive was challenged to drink a glass of effluent at a company function.
Saiccor is today the world’s largest producer of chemical cellulose, and employs about 1200 people directly and about 20 000 indirectly, its pulp being used largely for products such as viscose, acetate and cellophane. In 2012 the company said almost half its staff came from Umkomaas, Magabeni, Craigieburn, Roseneath and Widenham.[3]
The manufacture of over 1 billion components annually for the packaging industry and furniture assembly are also carried out in the area. Additional infrastructure includes the roads and railways built by and for Saiccor’s operations, together with a stretch of Spoornet-owned coastal track, on which Saiccor to this day maintains and operates classic steam engines.
There are some eucalyptus and wattle plantations on higher inland ground in the general area, many of which were established for Saiccor. But most of the farming done around Umkomaas is for sugar cane and these fields are a noticeable landscape feature.
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