eBusiness Weekly
Michael Tome
HARARE – Listed beverages giant Delta Corporation Limited posted a 77 percent jump in profit to $57, 2 million in the six months to September 30, 2018 from $32, 3 million recorded in the prior comparable period.
The group’s revenue steadily rose by 37 percent to $341, 4 million in the period under review from $250 million recorded previously whereas operating income was $28 million higher than $38 million recorded in the same comparable period last year which is a 73 percent growth.
This outstanding performance is attributable to impressive growth in volumes of lager and sorghum beer which grew by 54 and two percent respectively whilst sparkling beverages grew by three percent.
Delta’s associates African Distillers performed satisfactorily in terms of volumes and financial performance whereas Schweppes witnessed growth in volumes despite periodic outages of raw materials.
Delta Corporation CEO Pearson Gowero highlighted that sorghum beer volumes grew by two percent (after being negative in in the first quarter) owing to a remarkable 41 percent surge in sales of Chibuku Super beer mainly due to growth in economic and the just ended plebiscite related activity.
On the other hand constraints in form of currency shortages led to a suppressed capacity of Chibuku and lager.
“Consumer demand has been firm due to improved economic activity in mining, agriculture and election related spending. However outages of important raw materials arising from limited hard currency led to a constrained capacity in lager and Chibuku Super beer,” said Mr Gowero.
Gowero stressed that his company had not scaled down operations in any way but instead lamented over the market turbulences which have led to an array of challenges in the beverage business dating back from early October this year.
“Market disturbances since October affected business confidence leading to spike in demand, disruptions of delivery schedule due to fuel supply and distorted value perceptions multi-tier pricing which undoubtedly hurt customers.
“Panic buying by our customers emptied shelves particularly of local products and we have struggled since then to keep our market fully supplied not that we have scaled down anything in fact our capacity is stretched to the limit,” said Gowero.
Going forward the company is looking to address product supply challenges.
