eBusiness Weekly
Michael Tome
Associated Foods Zimbabwe (AFZ) is looking to invest $1 million in expanding its fruit and vegetable canning plant in Vumba by year-end as it shifts focus on the regional markets, according to chief executive Simba Nyabadza.
The company was established from the merger of two small family businesses — Spread Valley and Honeywood.
It processes fruits and vegetables and some of its products include natural fruit jams and marmalades, peanut butter, canned fruits, processed tomatoes, tomato sauces, chutneys, baked beans, canned vegetables, nuts and savouries under Mama’s, Farmgold and Sunbird brands.
In the past two years, the company increased its monthly production by 600 percent to about 350 tonnes thanks to $2 million capital injection by the Norwegian Investment for Developing Countries.
The plant expansion will see the company start exporting to Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique soon.
“We are about to introduce a new canning plant valued at $1 million in this fourth quarter and that will increase our product range of canning fruits and baked beans,” Nyabadza told Business Weekly at a function to celebrate AFZ attainment of ISO certification in food safety and management in Vumba recently.
“The plant will enable us to increase our canning diversity as well as canning of vegetables, fruits, baked beans and other ancillary vegetables thus growing our range of products. Currently AFZ has a 70 and 35 percent domestic market share of peanut butter and jam respectively and intends to grow it further.
On price hikes currently prevailing, Nyabadza said the company has not increased price on products that require local raw material serve for a marginal increase on those that have foreign component.
In terms of raw materials for the plant, the company is importing groundnuts from Malawi and pineapples from Mozambique and is looking to expand its contract farming scheme by engaging more farmers.
“We are talking to commercial tobacco farmers to lessen our imports, we want them to rotate tobacco with groundnuts since groundnuts act as an enhancer to tobacco soils it has been done in the 1970’s so we want to reintroduce that culture again.
“Last year we had 2 000 small-scale farmers in Chisumbanje, Makoni and Mutare that were involved in outgrowers’ schemes funded by ourselves in conjunction with Food Agriculture Organisation,’’ he said.
