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Dickson Mangena, Business Reporter
THE country’s first bitumen emulsion plant owned by Asphalt Products which was commissioned over seven months ago in Bulawayo is still to start full throttle production due to depleted nostro account balances culminating in local banks struggling to facilitate external payments for the importation of strategic raw materials.
The state-of-the-art plant valued at $500 000 was commissioned by Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Dr Joram Gumbo at the end of April. However, not much has been done in terms of production since the launch of the factory.
In an interview with Sunday Business on Thursday, Asphalt Products’ managing director Engineer Francis Mangwendeza said the plant was operating at eight percent capacity due to lack of raw materials.
“The plant is unfortunately idle at the moment because we cannot import bitumen. The banks do not have nostro accounts so bitumen suppliers from outside Zimbabwe cannot sell to us the raw materials that we need.
“Actually from the commissioning of our plant there has not been much processing that we have done at the plant as we were processing as low as two hours a month,” Eng Mangwendeza said.
The plant has the capacity of producing 10 tonnes of bitumen emulsion per hour. Bitumen emulsion is used in road construction.
Eng Mangwendeza said the company’s drive to market its product locally has been frustrated by the influx of cheap imports especially from South Africa.
“After the commissioning of our plant, it took time for us to get market confidence but after a while we were slowly getting market confidence, then there were other firms from South Africa that were supplying Local Government authorities with bitumen emulsion. Although we have the capacity to supply the whole country we never got the support of our Local Government authorities,” said Eng Mangwendeza.
He said the company had since approached the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to have bitumen emulsion included under import restriction through the Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016.
He also said that they were appealing to different Government authorities for the support of local bitumen emulsion producers.
“We have approached the Ministry of Industry and Commerce requesting that bitumen emulsion be excluded from the Open General Import Licence. We have also been applying for assistance from the Competition and Tariffs Commission,” said Eng Mangwendeza.
He said despite the plant’s low capacity utilisation the company was exploring a number of export markets.
“We are working on an export drive, we were hoping by now we could have taken over the local markets but we are taking some steps to do so as we are in the process of getting an ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) certification.
However, the challenge is that the Standard Association of Zimbabwe doesn’t have the equipment to do the processes and it relies on South Africa making the process longer,” said Eng Mangwendeza.
The engineering company was formed in 1996 and offers services such as road maintenance, road construction, sports courts and infrastructure services.
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