Nestle to resume Cerevita exports to SA

Published: 14 November 2013

FOOD giant Nestle Zimbabwe intends to re-establish the export of Cerevita to South Africa which was terminated a few years ago, The Financial Gazette reported.

The company's managing director, Kumbirai Katsande, told Fingaz that exports to South Africa will commence in the next few months.

He said since 2010, Nestle Zimbabwe had invested close to $20 million in the refurbishment and upgrading of the cereals and milo plant and equipment to increase production of new products.

Out of this amount, $14 million was invested this year to finance capital projects.

The funds were provided by its Swiss based parent company.

"We are increasing our share of exports into the region as much as we are increasing the capacity share of our factory," said Katsande.

"Our Harare factory is for the region. Therefore, it's important that we take advantage of trade agreements between Zimbabwe and other countries in the region," said Katsande.

He said agriculture must feed into the manufacturing sector to help Zimbabwe's economy to grow.

"As a country we are doing badly in producing what we want to trade."

He added: "As you might be aware, we are already exporting to Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi but in a few months time, we will also be exporting to South Africa. We are ready for it and we actually want Cerevita to be all over Africa.

"We have invested close to $20 million since 2010 in the refurbishment and upgrading of our plants."

Nestle has been in Zimbabwe for over 54 years, positively contributing to the economic growth and employment creation in the country.

It currently employs about 200 permanent employees.

The company has also installed an underground water tank to increase water storage by more than five times.

The spending demonstrates the company's commitment to pursuing projects expected to provide profitable, long-term growth for shareholders.

Cerevita is now freely available on the domestic market due to the increase in cereals production capacity which has doubled from last year since the installation of the new processing plant.

New varieties of Cerelac - Cerelac Maize and Cerelac Three Fruits - were launched a few months ago.

Two mega silos for storage of imported raw materials have been recently installed; these will facilitate consistent Cremora production.

The company also built a new administration block and quality assurance laboratories which were officially opened in September this year.

Nestle Zimbabwe also launched a $14 million dairy empowerment scheme in December 2011 whose main objective is to rebuild the dairy industry in Zimbabwe.

Two thousand dairy cows for large scale commercial farmers and 2000 dairy cows for the small scale farmers are being imported to support this scheme, which will run for the next five years.

Nestle Zimbabwe's financial results are consolidated into Nestle Equatorial Africa Region Limited's results, which consist of 21 countries.

These regional results are then consolidated into Nestle SA which finally publishes the results as a group. The group's financial results for the year to December 2012 slowed down in growth in emerging markets.

Its net profit of $11,5 billion represents an increase of 11,5 percent on the 2011 performance, which was however slightly ahead of analysts' forecasts.

Sales at the world's top food industry player rose by 10,2 percent to hit 92,2 billion Swiss francs.
- fingaz