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Charity Ruzvidzo Business Reporter
THE National Bakers Association of Zimbabwe (NBAZ) is facing challenges in securing $300 million to retool from local financiers the president, Givemore Mesoemvura, said yesterday. He said their membership which was about 250 continued to experience funding challenges to boost the baking industry’s capacity utilisation, which at the moment was at 60 percent. “Our major challenge is failure to access loans from banks to retool the baking industry. Banks say they don’t have money. The sector needs about $300 million in order to produce to its maximum capacity,” he said.

Mesoemvura said the sector still uses old machinery that required replacement.
“Some bakeries are using old machinery which needs to be replaced. If we manage to access money from the banks we might be able to do away with that challenge,” he said.

Mesoemvura said there was a need for the local baking sector to catch up with technological trends in regional countries.
“Our baking sector needs to improve its standards so as to match those of our regional counterparts. Our goal is to produce bread of excellent quality and catch up with the region,” he said.

Mesoemvura said they expected demand for bread to increase towards the festive season.
“Demand for bread has softened as we’re producing 900,000 loaves of bread per day instead of $1, 8 million loaves. The situation usually changes towards the festive season as demand tends to increase,” he said.

Mesoemvura said small bakeries were struggling to keep afloat in the market which had stiff competition.
“Small bakeries face competition from well-established bakeries like Bakers Inn and Lobel’s. However every market has competition so they should try to improve standards in order to maintain that small market space they have,” he said.

Due to economic challenges more than 80 bakeries have since closed shop in the past four years.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, an industrial representative body, has pointed out that lack of working capital was one of the major challenges affecting the manufacturing sector from improving productivity to competitive levels.

A manufacturing sector survey report released by CZI recently indicated that due to a host of challenges prevailing in the economy capacity utilisation in local industries had further declined to 36,3 percent from 39,6 percent in 2013.