Top baked beans exporter Cashel Valley is now a shadow of its former self as it has been reduced to a mere sawmill.
In its heyday, before the land grab, Cashel Valley exported most of its products to the United Kingdom and was one of Zimbabwe’s top foreign currency generating entities before the turn of the new millennium.
The firm comprised a vast farm that specialised in growing beans and encompassed a processing and packaging plant. The entire operation was vandalised following the controversial land reform ordered by President Robert Mugabe in 2000, which saw thousands of commercial farmers losing their farms.
Cashel Valley was reduced from a viable commercial entity employing thousands of workers and generating vital foreign currency to a partitioned maize field allocated to several inexperienced subsistence farmers.
The greater part of the farm is now under the jurisdiction of Misheck Beta who is linked to Zanu (PF) and also seemingly in charge of the former processing and packaging structure.
On a recent visit The Zimbabwean news crew noted that only remains of scrap metal of the once highly functional plant are housed in the wrecked structure where Beta has since established an indigenous sawmill. Beta, who is related to the late prominent businessman-cum-politician Shadreck Beta, lamented the state of the former top exporter.
“The situation is really terrible. Cashel Valley was known the world over but today it is a different story. We tried to engage the top leadership in the mid-2000s on how government could revive it. VP Mujuru came and made promises but they never materialised,” said Beta.
Cashel Valley is just one of the many farms that were reduced to ruins following the land grab exercise. Kondozi Farm, a highly productive horticulture enterprise, suffered similar vandalism and mismanagement. The Zimbabwean
