Midlands firms see huge potential in Sadc Industrialisation Week
AS the country prepares to host the seventh edition of the Sadc Industrialisation Week (SIW) in Harare later this month, businesses in the Midlands Province have vowed to leverage the strategic event to forge partnerships, expand their operations and unlock new opportunities for growth and development.
Government expects about 300 guests and 150 companies to participate in deliberations during the SIW, which will take place ahead of the Sadc Summit to be held in August this year.
Scheduled to run from July 28 to August 2, 2024, under the theme: “Promoting Innovation to Unlock Opportunities for Sustainable Economic Growth and Development: Towards an Industrialised Sadc”, the SIW events will include conferencing and exhibitions.
Sino-Zim, a Gweru-based cement producer, which has retooled to boost production levels and match demand in line with the massive infrastructure development ahead of the 44th Sadc Summit, will be part of participating firms.
The company’s sales and marketing manager, Mr Ibiam Sengwe, said their capacity utilisation was hovering at about 80 percent.
“As we were coming out of the Covid -19 period, we saw our capacity utilisation jumping from 70 percent to 80 percent in the last quarter of 2023,” he said.
“We had to stop production towards 2023 as we were retooling our plant angling to tackle some huge projects. After the retooling exercise, we saw our clinker production jump from 180 000 to 270 000 tonnes annually.”
Mr Sengwe said they have secured some exclusive rights to supply cement to the construction of Parliament building, which helped the company improve production as demand for their cement jumped.
Sino Zimbabwe plant
“Building villas and road infrastructure across the country also helped us increase our production levels. Now, we are looking forward to the industrialisation week where we hope to expand our network levels,” he said.
Bata Shoe Company has also invested US$5 million in acquiring a polyurethane pouring machine, which makes safety and school shoes, which is expected to reduce the country’s import bill.
Bata Shoe Company country manager, Mr Simon Mutisya, said the machine was a game changer in an area where they used to import shoes from their sister companies.
He said the industry’s demand for safety shoes is growing and expressed excitement that the company was even exporting to regional countries.
“The acquisition of the machine led to the employment of 25 new employees who are working in the production line. We are looking forward to participating in the Sadc Industrialisation Week as we seek to expand our wings to the rest of the region,” said Mr Mutisya.
“We are also looking forward to having fresh ideas on how we can continue to synergy with our sister companies and come up with new lines.”
Several private sector players are expected to be part of the annual public-private engagement platform designed to foster new opportunities for intra-African trade, develop cross-border value chains and identify investment opportunities in the Sadc region.
It will precede the senior officials, Council of Ministers Meetings and Sadc Summit, which will take place from August 9-18 2024, at the New Parliament Building in Mt Hampden.
One of the convention’s key objectives is to promote the Sadc Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap (2025-2063) (SISR) to ensure a wider understanding and acceptability among the Sadc community members, including Governments, the members of the public and private sector, academia, research institutions and think tanks.-chroncile
