Timothy
Business Writer
Tanganda Tea Company has invested US$6 million into its beverages division factory in Mutare as part of efforts to enhance production efficiencies.
The investment is part of the cumulative US$37 million the group deployed in its various capital projects to help modernise the Mutare factory in line with global standards.
Other investment projects carried out by the group in the past decade include US$2 million avocado pack house, 1 000 hectares irrigation scheme that gobbled US$5 million, another US$2 for macadamia processing facility and US$7,5 million for three solar projects.
Chief executive officer, Tim Fennell, said the investments were financed through internally generated funds, loans as well as substantial support from parent company Meikles Limited.
“Renewal of the tea blending and packaging plant in Mutare has been a major focus for the past eight years with approximately US$6 million invested in modernising the factory to meet world class standards as well as save the markets adequately,” he said at an analysts briefing in Harare recently.
The plant has capacity to pack 3 800 tonnes of both leaf tea and tea bags.
The Beverage division was established in 1960 with the construction of a tea blending and packing plant in Mutare with brands that include Special Blended tea bags , Tanganda, Stella, Tips, Fresh Leaves, Silver & Joko teas, Healthi Green, Natra and Nella Rooibos, High Country Coffee, Moringa, Zumbani and Tingamira mineral water, which has water sales of 2,9 million litres
The introduction of Tinga mira mineral water in 2006 marked the expansion of product portfolio in the beverage division.
“The brand was accepted by the market and continues to be appropriately positioned as an upmarket trusted brand. There are opportunities to grow the wet segment part of the business,” said Fennell.
Tanganda is divided into two main operating divisions that is agriculture with five estates and beverage divisions with a corporate arm responsible for administration of the two divisions.
The group exports to over 25 countries and export earnings constitute approximately 72 percent of total sales revenue. The company exports 80 percent of tea as bulk tea, almost 90 percent of avocados and almost 100 percent of macadamia nuts.
Fennell said the company will continue to focus on enhanced capacity and widen product range into the export market with prospects of spreading into the Canadian and North American markets.
Part of the key areas of focus will be expansion of the packed tea market by growing the regional markets, macadamia nuts value addition, mechanization of the timber operation as well as enhance plucking mechanization programmes.
The company is also looking at commercialising its livestock operations.
These projects, he said, would improve production capacity and efficiency to enable the firm to further expand its export market. Tanganda is set to make a return on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) following unbundling from Meikles Limited.
Bongani Ndlovu