23/02/2010 (Bloomberg) - Bidco Uganda Ltd., owners of the country’s largest edible-oil refinery, may produce as much as 20,000 metric tons of the product in its first year of operation, Kodey Rao, the managing director said.

The company started palm-oil processing last month, Rao said today in a phone interview from Jinja, in eastern Uganda.

About half of the 6,000 hectares (14,826 acres) planted by the company in its nucleus estate will supply the refinery in the first year of operation, he said. Very little will come from smallholders because only a portion of their 3,500 hectares under the crop is yielding, Rao added.

“Government only managed to get us 6,000 hectares of land,” Rao said. “We don’t know when we shall get all the land that we want because the process is slow.” Bidco plans to produce 140,000 tons of palm-kernel oil once its full required area starts yielding, he said.

Bidco, a unit of Kenya-based Bidco Oil Refineries Ltd., has so far spent $35 million in establishing the plantation, with an additional $10 million being spent on the building of the refinery, he said.

The company plans an investment of $130 million in the East African country in five years, which will enable it have the biggest palm-oil plantation in Africa, according to its Web site. That will save Uganda $60 million annually on palm-oil imports, Bidco said.