eBusiness Weekly
Michael Tome BH24 Reporter
SUPPLY and availability of sparkling beverages is set to improve after Delta Corporation said it will receive critical raw materials by early February, as engagement between government and the company bears fruit.
The development comes after the company had closed three of its soft its soft drink factories, including the Graniteside plant, its largest.
Delta is facing operational challenges due to biting foreign currency challenges across the country, which has reduced capacity utilization in the soft drinks division of Zimbabwe biggest beverages maker to 30 percent capacity.
The foreign exchange situation is expected to ease as the tobacco harvesting period will gain momentum from March.
Delta recently announced it would sell its products in foreign currency but Government quickly intervened and made a commitment to ensure the company gets the hard currency it needs to import raw materials.
Delta corporation corporate affairs director Alex Makamure told Minister of Industry and Commerce Mangaliso Ndlovu during a tour of the company that the raw materials consignment expected in the country was sufficient for a month.
“There is a structure that we are working on which will allow us to bring some raw material supply in the next week or so but, won’t be enough maybe until we get to the tobacco (selling) season (in March/April).
“The order we are talking about will be shipped sometime next week towards the first week of February and will only cover one month,” Mr Makamure.
He indicated that his company was finding it hard to operate at normal levels, which saw it shutting down three of its factories with its trading update for the quarter to December revealing volumes slumped by sixty percent from the prior comparable period.
“Facilities that we are working on which will benefit our sparkling beverages a business which is currently limping as we speak the Graniteside plant has not been running for about two weeks so far.
“If you saw our trading update soft drink business was down 60 percent on prior year, it’s a catastrophe from that perspective, we are making losses in the soft drink business as we speak. We understand that forex is in short in supply in the country.
“For soft drinks as we speak 3 factories are on shutdown because we have run out of key raw material so for the past 4 months we have been limping along at about 30 percent capacity because of lack of raw material ,”said Mr Makamure.
