Online Reporter
Judith Phiri and Media Mpofu, Sunday News Reporters
INDUSTRIES in Bulawayo have emphasised the importance of foreign currency availability and affordable retooling loans as key factors in driving the revival of the city’s industrial hub status.
The manufacturing sector in Bulawayo is experiencing a notable resurgence, driven by substantial capital investments from leading companies. This ongoing retooling initiative aligns closely with Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030, which seeks to position the country as an upper-middle-income economy.
In an interview after a tour by Zanu-PF Economic Development and Empowerment Cluster on Thursday, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Services (Private) Limited (Ref-Air) general manager Ms Karen Mirtle said that while over the years they have invested in retooling and upgrading their machinery, there was still a need for a cash injection to complete the exercise.
“So over the past four years, we have been bringing in, upgrading and mechanising the decoiling line as well as the bending and splitting machines. So on that side production has increased, we can do 10 to 20 times much faster than what we used to do manually,” she said.
“It has become far more accurate, it has precision and it is quick. We can just put in the sizes of the products that we want to many, how many we want and it just rolls it all out in one operation. However, the bottleneck now is the pneumatic press which is still manually operated, pulled up by hand on pulleys.”
A pneumatic press machine uses compressed air to create a force for many industrial uses, it can stamp and shape metal by taking advantage of pressurised air rather than electricity or hydraulics.
Ms Mirtle said they had acquired the pneumatic press which is one of the critical machineries for the final phase in their manufacturing line, however, they needed foreign currency for the final 20 percent payment.
She said they have paid 80 percent for the machinery which is over two million South African Rand.
“For the final 20 percent payment we applied for it from the foreign exchange auction system at the end of 2023. We were allocated the funds, however, the monetary policy changed and that money was put into Non-Negotiable Certificates of Deposits (NNCDs).
“So we are now stuck, that money has been taken out of our business and we have not been able to pay the final instalment. The machine is stuck in South Africa, they want to sell it to get it out of their workshop because it’s taking up too much space as it is a 21-metre press,” she added.
Ms Mirtle said they needed Government assistance to be able to access foreign currency so that they can bring in the machine to increase their capacity utilisation and spur up their production.
She said acquiring the machine would mean that they could increase their manufacturing tenfold, as a company that was also tapping into foreign markets with their products.
“So we have supplied our services right up through Africa. We have done abattoirs in Zambia, we have done work in Uganda, Mozambique and Malawi. With the African Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) opening up, our competition is South Africa and unless we mechanise, we cannot compete because will not be producing at the rate we need to,” she said.
General Beltings (GB) Holdings Limited acting group managing director, Mr Joseph Gunda said 90 percent of their raw materials were imported.
“As I was presenting to the dignitaries, some of our customers pay for products that we manufacture in local currency (Zimbabwe Gold), but we cannot use the local currency to import our raw materials,” he said.
“We are importing right now from South Africa and we need foreign to import those raw materials.
Therefore, if we cannot get foreign currency it affects our production.”
The Zanu-PF Economic Development and Empowerment Cluster team was led by the party’s Secretary for Business Development, Elifasi Mashaba and comprised National Deputy Secretary for Economic Affairs and a member of the Politburo Endy Mhlanga, Director of Economic Affairs, Annastancia Ndlovu, the party’s Director for Economic Development and Empowerment Francis Hungwe, Director for Business Development Collen Mharadzano.
On Thursday, the Cluster toured Bulawayo companies including Ref-Air, General Beltings and the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) to assess the prevailing conditions and performance.
