Rust, ruin and lost millions: Fengyue ghost resurfaces
Thirteen years after its collapse, the ghost of the failed Fengyue Glass Project has risen again to stalk the government.
Once hailed as a flagship joint venture between the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) and China’s Shanghai Fengyue, the Palapye glass plant now stands as a rusting monument to broken promises — and it is back in the national spotlight.
Serowe South MP Leepetswe Lesedi reignited the controversy in Parliament, pressing Trade and Entrepreneurship Minister Tiroeaone Ntsima for answers. Lesedi demanded a full account: the total government expenditure, recoveries through liquidation, the net loss, and whether revival is possible given the investment in a railway line to the site.
Ntsima traced the project’s troubled history. Conceived in 2007, the 450 tonnes per day float glass venture was incorporated as Fengyue Glass Manufacturing Botswana (Pty) Ltd, with BDC holding 43 per cent and Shanghai Fengyue 57 per cent.
An Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract was signed in 2008, with completion scheduled for 2011. Delays pushed the timeline, and by September 2011, the contractor had stopped work. The site was abandoned in August 2012.
Massive cost overruns and failure to complete construction forced liquidation. In 2013, BDC’s board resolved to wind up the company, and a liquidation order was granted in October that year. Nigel Dixon Warren of KPMG was appointed liquidator in March 2014.
The financial toll is staggering. Total funds spent reached P601.2 million, including BDC’s disbursements of P447.8 million and Shanghai Fengyue’s equity of P153.4 million. Of this, construction accounted for P118.3 million, equipment and machinery P320.7 million, and additional works P8.8 million.
Recoveries amounted to just P67.8 million — P6.7 million in cash and P61.1 million in kind, mainly land and property transferred to Western Industrial Estates, a BDC subsidiary. The net loss: about P380 million.
BDC issued a Request for Proposals in December 2022 to find new uses for the site, but no viable offers emerged. The Corporation is still exploring options to extract economic value from the land.
Ntsima noted that a forensic investigation and parliamentary inquiry in 2012 highlighted governance failures rather than criminal acts. In response, BDC introduced higher risk and governance frameworks in 2015, which are periodically reviewed. At full operation, the project was expected to create 546 jobs.
For now, the skeletal remains of the Palapye glass plant stand as a cautionary tale — a reminder of ambition undone by mismanagement, and a ghost that refuses to fade from Botswana’s political memory.