National Foods says safeguard protection for locally made pasta is about building an industry rather than closing the market, as the Competition and Tariff Commission investigates whether imports are harming the country’s only domestic producer.
The commission formally opened the investigation on 18 September through General Notice 1787 of 2026, after a preliminary assessment found enough evidence to proceed.
National Foods is seeking import protection across all six HS 1902 tariff lines, a scope it says is meant to close loopholes, and has also asked for a provisional measure while the case runs.
Interested parties have 30 days from initiation to register to take part, and the inquiry must conclude within six months, with one extension of up to two months allowed.
The company insists it is not seeking a monopoly.
“The objective is not to eliminate imports or reserve the market for one producer, but to create fair conditions for local manufacturing to grow, attract investment and retain more economic value within Zimbabwe,” National Foods said.
The push aligns with the Government’s industrialisation agenda. The second Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy, running to 2030, targets manufacturing growth of at least 5 percent a year and capacity utilisation of 60 percent and aims to raise local content to 75 percent by 2035.
The National Development Strategy 2 names local content and Buy Zimbabwe among the drivers of structural transformation.
NDS2 also records wheat among agriculture’s gains.
Local pasta turns more of that harvest into finished goods on Zimbabwean shelves, in place of a product the country has long bought from abroad.
Zimbabwe made no pasta of its own until February 2024, when National Foods commissioned a plant built at a cost of about US$7,9 million.
The group had previously imported the product. Running at capacity, the line can make 14 400 tonnes of pasta a year, which would consume 18 500 tonnes of local wheat. Its output is sold under the Better Buy and Primo brands.
The operation buys locally made packaging and employs 54 people directly, with further work flowing to farmers, millers, transporters and distributors.
Demand has given the company plenty of room to grow. The plant is now running at 70 percent to 80 percent of capacity, while imports rose from 34 483 tonnes in 2022 to 58 098 tonnes last year, a 68,5 percent increase. Imported pasta still supplies about 87 percent of what Zimbabweans eat. National Foods credits the growth to pasta’s affordability and convenience and to changing eating habits.
National Foods says its application to the Commission shows imported pasta landing at roughly 29 percent below the cost of producing it locally. Importers then add their own margins, which the company puts at anywhere from nothing to 30 percent, so part of that gap is absorbed before the product reaches the shelf.
Even so, Better Buy and Primo sell at about 18 percent above the main imported brands, in line with the Commission’s preliminary finding, based on selling prices, of undercutting of up to 17,8 percent.
Tariffs do little to close the gap. Pasta under HS code 1902 carries a most favoured nation duty of 40 percent, but National Foods says 92 percent of 2025 import volume came in under regional trade preferences, with Egypt supplying 55 percent and Mozambique 37 percent. Egyptian pasta enters at the COMESA duty rate of zero.
The Commission’s notice also lists Botswana, China, Namibia and South Africa among the main sources.
Egyptian suppliers carry a double advantage. On top of duty-free access, Egyptian producers benefit from a significant state export subsidy programme. Support of that kind, the company argues, leaves a newly established producer competing on terms it cannot match through efficiency alone.
If protection is granted, National Foods expects imported pasta prices to rise accordingly, while its own prices should stay largely stable.
That outlook depends on the local wheat price matrix, steady fuel prices and packaging costs, which are tied to imported raw materials.
Protection, the company says, would give the industry time to lift capacity utilisation, improve unit economics and build scale.
With further development of the local pasta industry, National Foods would consider investing in a spaghetti line, and it is looking at exports, starting with Zambia. It argues that a viable market would also pull other manufacturers into local production, making this an industrialisation opportunity rather than shelter for a single firm.
Nor would Zimbabwe be acting alone. The company points to pasta-related protective or trade remedy measures in Madagascar, Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa. A safeguard here, National Foods says, would give local producers space to reach scale while keeping the market competitive and protecting consumers’ longer-term interests, with knock-on business for packaging suppliers and more jobs.-herald
