Sugar manufacturer Tongaat Hulett has announced that its restructuring plan is now expected to be completed on October 14.

The company’s chief restructuring officer, Piers Marsden, and the restructuring committee initially set out to have the plan completed by September 30.

The plan is meant to deal with Tongaat’s excess debt and longer-term sustainability. The company has an excess debt bill of about R6.3-billion in South Africa.

The group established a restructuring committee as an additional subcommittee of its board of directors to oversee and approve negotiations and the consensual development of a plan to reduce and repay debt to sustainable levels.

Professional service firm PwC found in mid-2019 in an investigation into the group’s accounting practices that ten former executives of Tongaat allegedly inflated profits and inflated the value of assets.

These former executives of the company, including former CEO Peter Staude and former CFO Murray Hector Munro, made their first appearance in the Durban High Court earlier in September, facing charges related to fraud amounting to R3.5-billion. The case has been adjourned to February 17, 2023, for a pre-trial conference.

As of June, the National Director of Public Prosecutions has not yet made a decision on whether or not to charge some of the former executives with racketeering.

Tongaat, under the leadership of CEO Gavin Hudson, has since been trying to get its financials and reputation back on track.

“The board and management continue to progress the turnaround and restructuring plan. The final plan will be based on work to assess a wide array of options for the optimal future of the business. It is important to note that no final decisions have been made at this time,” states Hudson.

Meanwhile, Tongaat has appointed Louisa Stephens as acting chairperson of the audit and compliance committee, effective October 1. This followed the resignation of Linda de Beer owing to pressures on her time, in her also being a chairperson of nonprofit corporation Public Oversight Board, based in Spain.

Stephens is a chartered accountant and was appointed to the Tongaat board in July 2020. She also holds nonexecutive directorships at entertainment company Multichoice Group, platinum miner Royal Bafokeng Platinum and the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa.