eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
Have you ever wondered how much water, electricity, fuel, maize or wheat Innscor Africa Limited consumes in its operations?
Innscor Africa Limited is one of Zimbabwe’s biggest manufacturers and marketers of fast-moving and durable consumer products.
The conglomerate, which was founded in 1987, also exports to regional and international markets.
Innscor, through its subsidiaries and business units, is primarily involved in maize milling and the production of stock feeds, edible oils, baker’s fat and pork products; as well as poultry, table eggs and day-old chicks.
One of its subsidiary divisions manufactures and markets a range of plastic carry bags, televisions, refrigerators and other general household appliances and consumables such as rice, dairy, candles and beverages.
But have you ever wondered what it takes for the company to produce all these products? How much water, electricity, raw materials among other inputs does it need?
Over the years, the company would report on the cost of sales, without necessarily breaking down on the what and how much it was billed on.
This is information is, however, revealed in its latest 2020 Annual Report.
Under a category titled “Sustainability In Our Value Chain”, the company reveals the quantities it uses from raw materials to utilities such as water and electricity.
Innscor’s key products are manufactured and produced from maize, soya beans, soya meal, wheat, mealie meal and stock feeds.
For the full year to June 2020, Innscor consumed 319 957 tonnes of maize down from 393 849 tonnes prior year comparative.
The company needed 68 451 tonnes of soya bean down from 88 341 in the comparable prior year.
A total 227 147 tonnes of wheat were required, again lower than the 366 204 tonnes in FY2019.
In the year under review, Innscor went big in using recycled input materials. Overall material recycled went to as high as 28 percent from 10 percent prior year comparative.
The Group says it ensured that the recycled material inputs were screened for negative impacts and also met the quality and standards for re-use in other products.
In terms of electricity, Innscor used as much as 68 099 MWh. This was a significant drop from 100 272MWh used during the previous period.
The bulk of the energy needs seem to have shifted to diesel with the company utilising 5 474 493 litres of diesel to power its ovens.
The previous year, it had used 4 561 277.
Still on energy, the company used an additional 7 332 291 litres of diesel and 849 662 litres of petrol. Combined, there was a decline of close to 1 million litres of fuel, excluding that used to power ovens.
With the country having been hit by drought and the municipalities struggling to provide adequate and clean water supplies, the Group turned to more use of underground water.
Innscor sourced 1.2 cubic metres of water from boreholes. The previous year, borehole water contributed just 938 282 cubic metres.
A total 353 982 cubic metres, down from 473 358 cubic metres came from dams while 141 945 cubic metres down from 215 321 cubic metres was municipal water.
On the human capital side, the Group’s headcount includes 6 259 male and 1 320 female employees.
