eBusiness Weekly
Kudakwashe Mhundwa
Listed hardware retail chain, Powerspeed Electrical Limited, remains upbeat about its expansion projects countrywide with the group targeting to open five new branches across the country, managing director Hilton Macklin has said.
“We have thrived in the environment that we are operating in and that has been primarily on our responsiveness to the situation and our ability to alter direction to cope with the situation, we remain focused on our objective of providing a world class offering of hardware stores as well as building that offering and in that way I believe we will continue to build our market share in Zimbabwe.
“I am confident in our future obviously the future of the whole economy has been difficult to project but we are looking for better premises (prime sites) in Chinhoyi, Chitungwiza and Bulawayo to establish new and bigger premises so we are filling sufficiently confident that we can expand the business even in this environment,” said Macklin
He added that the group will be opening a new branch this Saturday in Harare’s Cameroon Street.
“We will be opening a branch on Saturday this week in Cameron street which is the original home of Electosales when it started in the 1950s so we are going home back to Cameroon street and we occupying the building that was once occupied by Fabs Hardware, “said Macklin
On performance, the group has registered a growth in throughput for the four months from October 2018 to January 2019.
Sales volumes also improved by about 10 percent year-on-year.
“In respect of the four months from October to January we continued to have an increase in throughput there have been difficulties but we have managed to pull through we have had an improvement in sales volumes of about 10 percent year-on-year for the equivalent period.
“There was an amount of trading disruption in the month of October and again in January which has had a bit of negative impact on where we stand but nonetheless we have seen an increase in volumes over the period,” he said.
The company declared a dividend of $0,4 cents per share to its shareholders for the year just ended.
Powerspeed’s history dates back to the 1970s when it operated as part of Mashonaland Holdings, then a diversified conglomerate with operations spanning the breadth of the Rhodesian economy.
When Zimbabwe liberalised its economy in the 1980s, the structure was deemed to be inefficient and the group was subsequently disbanded with Powerspeed being born out of the integration of a private company called Industrial Electric Holdings and all the electrical divisions of Mashonaland Holdings.
Today the group supplies a full range of electrical products and services across all sectors of the economy and has recently added retailing of general hardware to its portfolio of offerings. The retail segment now accounts for 50 percent of the group’s sales.
The branch expansion exercise commenced in the 2013 financial year with the retail giant opening new branches in Victoria Falls, on Harare Street (downtown Harare), Harare’s central business district (CBD), Chinhoyi as well as Gweru.
Further to that, the Kwekwe, Msasa and Mutare branches were relocated to bigger premises, while the Bulawayo, Chiredzi and Masvingo branches were renovated and branded Electrosales.
FY2018 saw Powerspeed opening two new branches in Harare, one in Pomona, and the other in the Village Walk Complex, in Borrowdale.
