Zambia Sugar workers end strike with pay deal

LUSAKA, June 16 (Reuters) - A strike over wages at Zambia Sugar, a unit of South Africa's Illovo Sugar, has ended after the company awarded permanent workers a 15 percent pay rise, the sugar producer and a union said on Saturday.

Workers at the company's Nakambala Sugar Estate south of the capital Lusaka went on strike on Tuesday demanding a 35 percent pay rise.

The company was losing 2,000 tonnes of production each day of the strike.

As part of the deal agreed on Friday, seasonal workers were granted a 12 percent wage hike, the company and the National Union of Plantation and Allied Workers (NUPAW) said in a joint statement.

"Almost all of the workers returned to work yesterday," a company spokesman told Reuters.

Zambia Sugar expects its sugar output to increase by more than 7 percent to over 400,000 tonnes in the current 2012/2013 season. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by John Stonestreet)