South Sudan’s only brewery is in a “precarious state” and could be forced to cease production within weeks because of shortages of fuel, raw materials and foreign currency in the conflict-riven country.

The drinks giant SAB Miller opened the £32m factory six years ago, before independence, to manufacture beer, spirits and soft drinks.

Its locally produced beers, which include Nile Special and White Bull, have seen off foreign competition to corner the market and have become a symbol of the pride that drove and accompanied South Sudan’s secession from its northern neighbour in 2011.

Now, however, the brewery could become another economic casualty of the 20-month civil war, which has killed more than 10,000 people, forced more than 2 million from their homes, and left about 4.6 million severely food-insecure.

Carlos Gomes, the managing director of the SAB Miller-owned Southern Sudan Beverages, said a lack of diesel, foreign currency and imported ingredients had already forced the brewery to slash beer production by three-quarters and send a quarter of its 405 employees home on rotational leave.



“Just about anything you can think of in South Sudan is imported – with the exception of water, because, thankfully, we’re close to the river Nile,” he said, adding that malt, maize, bottles, bottle tops and cleaning chemicals all had to be brought in from neighbouring countries.

“Even at these low, low levels of production, our estimate is that, by October, we’ll be out of raw materials,” he said. “The fact that we’re limping along now is already a severe problem; without raw materials, you can’t work.”

In Africa, typically, one earner supports eight people, so the effect here would go into the tens of thousands of people

But even if the brewery - which is based in the capital, Juba - were to get “a pile of cash tomorrow”, he added, it would still struggle to eke out its raw materials while it waited for new stocks. “It’s a precarious position that we’re in,” he said.

“We have two plans – there’s obviously a shutdown scenario – but the one we are banking on is cutting production to make our materials last so that, hopefully, we’ll get an allocation [of foreign exchange] to enable us to go forwards. That’s our preferred option and the one we are working hard on, but we can’t put our heads in the sand about what the outcome might be.”

Workers sit outside the brewery, which has been a source of national pride for South Sudan. Photograph: Peter Martell/AFP/Getty Images

Gomes said that, as well as being a“substantial contributor” to the government’s coffers, the brewery supported thousands of jobs. Any shutdown, he warned, would be felt across the country, as the company sold to more than 3,000 customers.

“Some of those customers sell our stock on to other people, so there are literally thousands upon thousands of customers who depend on our product for their livelihood,” he said.

“If you take the African norm that, typically - and especially in third-world environments such as this - one earner would support eight people, you can see that the knock-on effect would go into the tens of thousands of people.”



Gomes said laying off workers remained “the absolute, absolute, absolute, absolute last resort”, but added the company could find itself with little choice. “The people we have we really cherish because, a, they are our employees, and, b, we have invested substantially in them to get them to the level they’re at,” he said.

“The last thing we want to do is lose that very vital resource. But, having said that, there will come a time when, if we have to shut down, well, what else can we do? The effects of that are too ghastly to contemplate.”



Bar owners said the closure would force them to import more expensive beer from neighbouring Uganda, with prices already having risen in recent months by more than a third.

Imagine those of us with small businesses. Can we afford to go to Uganda to import beer? We will be forced to close Joseph Laku

“I am definitely worried,” Joseph Laku, a small-scale beer retailer, told AFP last week. “Imagine those of us with small businesses, can we afford to go up to Kampala, Uganda, to import beers? We will be forced to close down our beer business.”

Gomes said national pride could also be dented by any shutdown. “Our success is in the fact that we have a mainstream beer at a mainstream price that is as good as an imported beer,” he said.

“We are – as a lot of our consumers are – incredibly proud of our brands. We’ve very proud that we can make an international standard product in South Sudan. There’s this sort of thinking that Made-in-South-Sudan equals inferior, but nothing could be further from the truth when it come to our brands.”

A customer buys beer outside the company’s gates. Photograph: Mark Tran/The Guardian

South Sudan, Africa’s youngest nation, has been convulsed by civil war since December 2013, when President Salva Kiir accused his former vice-president, Riek Machar, of plotting a coup.

The resulting conflict – which has split South Sudan along ethnic lines, pitting Kiir’s Dinka against Machar’s Nuer – has brought the country to its knees.

At the end of July, Stephen O’Brien, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and its emergency relief coordinator, said the hopes and dreams of the South Sudanese had been “shattered” and called for an end to the fighting.

“I call on the leadership of the warring parties to listen to the people of South Sudan and to lay down their arms, stop the violence, reconcile their differences and commit to sustainable peace,” he said during a visit to the country.

“If the violence continues, the already vast number of people suffering will continue to rise appallingly. As is true the world over, leaders must take responsibility for their own actions and for those who act in their name.”



