From camera-ready escarpments on the Blantyre-Chikwawa Road, PressCane Limited’s ethanol distillery in the Shire Valley pops into view like a smoke-free miniature placed on the west bank of Malawi’s largest river.
The distiller’s towering chimneys stopped producing smoke on January 26 when the Malawi Environmental Protection Authority (Mepa) shut down the coal-fired factory for polluting land, air, water and communities near its acidic wastewater ponds at Dyeratu in Chikwawa District.
Surrounding communities accuse the ethanol producer of chronic spills that have polluted the floodplain for nearly two decades as regulatory authorities slept on the job.
Three weeks ago, heavy torrents forced the swelling industrial wastewater to burst the waste ponds, flooding nearby homes, waterways, grasslands, farmlands and streams.
However, the shutdown ordered by environmental protectors has not stopped foul fumes seeping from wastewater waiting to be turned into fertiliser by a $10 million factory that has missed its rollout dates since 2023.
When one gets closer to Dyeratu Market, where travellers used to grab a bite on the way to Nsanje District at the southern tip, the stench overwhelms humanity.
The outpouring stink brings into question the ethical and sustainability ratings of PressCane, a joint venture by the State-dominated Press Corporation and privately-owned Cane Products Limited.
The firm employs about 100 workers who ferment molasses from Illovo Sugar (Malawi) plc’s sugar mills at Nchalo, 30km south of Dyeratu, to produce ethanol mostly used in petrol mixture, liquor production, school labs and other industrial processes.
Its sticky wastewater, a biochemical scientist at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (Mubas) described as highly acidic and toxic, exposes a graver environmental crisis that often goes unreported, unpunished, unmitigated and unaccounted for.
During a visit on Saturday, The Nation saw how a 1.5-metre high fence erected to keep the toxic waste in check has fallen short with the brownish liquid waste, called vinasse or stillage, freely seeping into nearby villages via porous soils, flooding and evaporation.
In an interview yesterday, Mubas Associate Professor Chikumbutso Kaonga said: “The waste product is highly acidic and rich in organic matter, which can kill any plants and living things in its way.”
The stated side-effects stirred a backlash in 2010 when PressCane was dumping the sticky waste on Dyeratu’s earth roads, only for rains to wash them into fields where crops kept wilting.
For over 15 years, fear ripples beyond the crowded community where recent overflows choked waterways and scorched crops, shrubs, trees in their way.
The bubbling pools and trail of destruction are vivid in Patrick Mpinganjira’s homestead where the spills scorched 28 trees, including hedges and two seven-year-old neem trees that stood green come rain or sunshine. The pair wilted and shed its leaves within hours, says the 58-year-old father of seven.
“The trees shade us from the valley’s sweltering sunshine and refresh the air we breathe, but they died within hours after PressCane’s wastewater flooded my home around 2am. By 4pm, the seven-year-old neem and matondo trees had wilted and later shed their leaves. Sadly, even the trees we plant can’t survive,” he laments.
Mpinganjira recalled that the tarry waste reached knee high, corroding the foundations of his three-bedroom house, making walls crack, discolouring its cement floors and leaving ‘a living fence’ dead.
The untreated wastewater also scorched his sweet potato vines earmarked for a fertile alluvial riverside plot as grain harvests keep dwindling due to frequent drought and flooding.
“The stinky spills make us poorer,” he says. “In 2023, when I was Area Development Committee chairperson in Traditional Authority Katunga, I summoned PressCane officials to explain its waste management plans and what was in it for surrounding communities. Its officials told us that the company dedicates two percent of their revenue—about K500 million—to community initiatives as its corporate social responsibility, but the amount is small change compared to their profits and the damage caused when the ponds burst.”
The toxic fumes that worsen during dry days when the spills bubble from the ground cause costly discomfort to Chimwemwe Chikowi, who pays extra costs to buy drugs for frequent asthma attacks that haunt her and two children.
“The three of us used to experience breathing difficulties once in two or three months, but suffer severe attacks twice or thrice a week. This is costly because asthma drugs cost at least K15 000. Severe attacks require an inhaler, which doesn’t come cheap,” she narrates.
The environmental health worker at Chikwawa District Hospital paid K55 000 for casual labourers to clear the raw wastewater that overflowed into her fence, scorching flowers and hedges that adorned the house.
Near her home, the effluent has destroyed millet and rice, leaving a blackish trail where it flowed to inundate a well where farmers filled watering cans to water vegetables.
The yellowish rice along the scorched strip looks stunted, suppressed as they battle for survival on polluted fertile farmland the scientist said could be over-fertilised by potassium, nutrient and organic matter from raw vinasse.
“Despite its high acidity which can scorch crops, the waste product is rich in the nutrients found in fertiliser, but excessive amounts can poison crops,” Kaonga, from Mubas’ Department of Physics and Biochemical Sciences, elaborated when The Nation showed him photos of scorched rice and tar-like waste from communal water sources.
PressCane plans to make the hazardous spills history by producing 10 000 metric tonnes (MT) of fertiliser a year, but the wait for the pet project is lengthening as overflows reduce fertile farmlands to ashy, cracking crust where tasseling rice lies dry like straw.
“When mom and I planted this rice with the first rains last December, we dug a mini-dam nearby to harvest rainwater that we could channel into the main plot in case the rains vanish before the crop matures, but both were buried in the waste from PressCane,” says Mary Watson, 19.
The rice plots are the size of three football fields and located within two kilometres from the wastewater ponds.
The brownish waste turns whitish like dry raw sewage or salt pans at the end of a five to 10km flow to a vast paddy—almost the size of over 50 football grounds—where over 100 farmers stopped growing rice 11 years ago due to pollution.
Oswald Thete, a 47-year-old father of four in Friday Village, mourns the lost years.
“In 2014, I was forced to abandon two rice plots that produced 26 to 30 bags weighing 50kg each. Then, PressCane assured us that the soils would be repaired within five years, only for pollution to get worse. By 2019, not even bushes grew here. For over 10 years, I have been renting smaller plots at K70 000 a season. I don’t expect rice to survive where shrubs cannot thrive,” he says.
Last December, the farmer received K36 000 from PressCane, but says he could not tell whether it was an allowance for attending a meeting convened by the company or compensation.
In an interview on Monday, PressCane chief executive officer Bryson Mkhomaanthu said the ethanol company has hired a consultant to assess the waste management structures and rolled out community engagements and remedial work while awaiting the consulting firm’s report by Friday.
When asked about the agony of farmers such as Thete, he stuttered: “I think that is news to me. It will be good to get to that place because there is an ongoing assessment being led by Chikwawa District Council in compliance with Mepa’s orders.”
Mepa, established by the Environmental Management Act of 2017, instructed the polluter to adequately compensate affected households and repair the environmental damage.
Last week, the National Water Resources Authority (NWRA) fined PressCane K40 million for polluting water for domestic use, agriculture, livestock, wildlife and future generations.
University of Malawi senior law lecturer Chikosa Banda said that beyond the administrative remedies ordered by Mepa, affected persons may also pursue judicial redress through the courts.
The environmental law scholar said instead of focusing on the specific allegations against Presscane, regulatory institutions and existing laws, “the situation points more broadly to the need to strengthen the institutional mechanisms responsible for implementing the country’s environmental law”.
He said: “Institutions like Mepa, NWRA and related State agencies require enhanced technical, human and financial capacity to effectively discharge their statutory mandates. Robust environmental governance depends not just on the existence of laws, but on the ability of institutions to monitor compliance, detect violations early and respond decisively before harm escalates.”
However, activists and concerned citizens dubbed the shutdown and fine as too little, too late.
Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy executive director Herbert Mwalukomo stated: “The good thing is that authorities are acting, which is good if the company is complying with the orders. The situation is appalling and I hope action will be taken speedily. It is one thing to give orders, but what matters is action.
“Regulators didn’t have to take this long to act. They were just watching instead of preventing the damage through regular inspection and periodic audits to avert the risk of pollution.”
Concurring, Coordination Union for Rehabilitation of the Environment (Cure) executive director Charles Mkoka, a biologist with media experience, urges State watchdogs, civil society and journalists to rise from slumber as profit-making firm’s soil the face of Malawi.
The law that gave rise to Mepa requires every major project to be preceded by credible environmental and social impacts assessments and management plan.
Community-based activist Lovemore Jambo says authorities “who are supposed to protect our lives and the environment” were nowhere to be found” until the situation got out of hand.
Prior to his reassignment to Ministry of Sports, Youth and Culture, Alfred Gangata, while serving as Minister of Natural Resources, visited PressCane and warned that the scandal should serve as a wake-up call that the government will take to task any firm that violates environmental management laws.
He visited PressCane wastewater ponds alongside Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Roza Fatchi Mbilizi, who ordered compensatory and remedial measures, saying ordinary citizens should not suffer due to industrial pollution.
Section 13 of the Constitution obliges the government to implement laws and policies to safeguard the environment for the wellbeing of the people of Malawi and future generations.
During the inauguration held on October 4 2025 at Kamuzu Stadium, Vice-President Jane Ansah tagged him a champion of the right to a clean environment, which was officially declared by the UN General Assembly in 2022.
Mwalukomo and Mpinganjira said widespread pollution in the country should awaken the Mutharika administration to prove itself worthy of the tag.
In 2001, PCL and Cane Products Limited entered into a Joint Venture Agreement to carry on business through a vehicle called PressCane Limited with PCL holding 50.1 percent and Cane Products holding 49.9 percent.
