eBusiness Weekly
Kudakwashe Mhundwa
HARARE – Listed roofing and building products manufacturer, Turnall Holdings Limited`s latest factory upgrade on its factories in Bulawayo and Harare has increased capacity utilisation by about 125 percent, Turnoll managing director Roselline Chisveto has said.
The factory upgrades started last year with the roofing concern announcing that it would conduct upgrades at a cost of $300 000.
At the time the Bulawayo plant was operating at 63 percent while the Harare plant was at 48 percent which plans to reach 100 percent capacity utilisation and output for both plants.
In an interview with this publication Ms Roselline Chisveto said the group has now implemented factory upgrades and management remains upbeat that FY2019 will be a good year for the company on the back of improved output.
“We have implemented that factory upgrade and we are producing better outputs because it was mostly on shifting our daily outputs from 80 tonnes to 180 tonnes that is why we have focused a better 2019 coming from that aspect that in house we have tried to improve our production processes and output.
“What we have done is we have put in new machinery and these are hydraulics so these hydraulics peaks on the speed at which production is processing so if you improve the speed it means you are producing more so what we did is we had to look at our hydraulics and a section were we had to make some adjustments so those adjustments have resulted in improved outputs,” said Ms Chisveto
On performance, the group`s sales volumes for the year ended 31 December 2018 rose 41 percent to 56 399 tonnes from 40 030 while turnover jumped 69 percent to $32,2 million from $19, 0 million.
During the period under review gross profit increased 97 percent to $13, 4 million from $6, 8 million. Likewise, the group`s cash generation capacity improved 290 percent from the prior year cash generation of $2 million to $7, 8 million before working capital.
