Zimglass to rebuild furnace for US$5,5m

expected later this year.
The G2 furnace has been idle since August last year when a decision was taken by management and employee representatives to stop operations from September to February this year to allow for the rebuild of the furnace.
It is one of the two furnaces owned by the company and produces packaging material for soft drinks, beer, pharmaceuticals and other processed food.
Group chief executive Mr Jacob Dube, said the rebuild was to have taken place between September last year and February this year.
But it was held up by delays in finalising funding.
“The hold-up was due to delays in finalising the funding, given the paucity of long-term financing in the economy,” he said. “It took this long to finalise the project financing.
“The current situation is that all the funding relating to the furnace rebuild and plant refurbishment has been finalised and suppliers are being paid. The rebuild work hits full throttle this month.”
Mr Dube added that commissioning of the G2 furnace, initially scheduled for February, would now be at the end of September or early October.
On completion of the rebuild, the glass electric furnace will have a minimum life span of two years and a maximum of five years.
When new, the furnace produces between 110 and 120 tonnes of molten glass a day. Production declines as the furnace ages.
At the beginning of last year the G2 furnace was producing 40 to 80 tonnes of glass daily due to numerous power cuts.
This was against a annual regional demand for glass of 1,2 million tonnes, including local demand of about 20 000 tonnes a year.
Mr Dube said they had held fruitful discussions with the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company on the supply of power.
Electricity is critical to the operation of the furnace, which needs to have constant power supply to avoid cooling and re-heating which can damage its walls.
Mr Dube said indications were that they would be allocated a line dedicated to their furnace.
“We will be signing the uninterrupted supply agreement with ZETDC to ensure we have no power supply cuts,” he said,
“In addition we will install a bank of heavy-duty generators as standby power supply. These arrangements will ensure we have continuous power to the plant.”
The return to operation of the G2 furnace will bring relief to about 500 workers, 300 permanent and 200 casual. They have been waiting on the sidelines for the furnace rebuild.
Following the temporary shutdown of the company in August last year, all contract workers were laid off while permanent workers were paid a monthly allowance.
“The position with the workforce is that we are in this unfortunate situation together,” he said. “Everyone understands the difficulties the economy is going through. You will remember that glass electric furnaces are rebuilt every four to five years and because of dollarisation, we could not use the Zimdollars for this purpose. At a dollarisation, we all started at zero funds.
“I would like to thank all employees and other stakeholders for being very patient and positive. The positive thing is that we will soon be back in full operation and we will all benefit from the patience that was exhibited during the very hard and difficult times.”
The resuscitation of the furnace is expected to benefit local industries, among them beverage manufacturer Delta.
They had resorted to importing bottles to match their accelerated rate of production.