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Sithandazile Moyo Business Reporter
LOCAL companies have expressed optimism that this year’s edition of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair will bring great business opportunities.The general manager of Fire Tech, Lovemore Ndebele, said a new product for farmers would be unveiled later this year.

“We came up with a new product which is ideal for farmers called a fire pump, it will help farmers in putting out veld fires which means it will help to protect the environment, farms and the wildlife,” he said.

Cooking oil manufacturing company United Refineries said this year’s exhibition provides better business opportunities compared to last year .
A representative from the company said they would use this year’s trade fair to market their products to lure investors and attract new markets.

“We are using this opportunity to market our products and create new markets. Some of the visitors were saying they could not find our products in supermarkets in particular those from Harare, so we are going to use this opportunity to explore those markets,” he said.

The representative said the company was operating at about 40 percent capacity hence they were looking forward to getting and creating partnerships to increase capacity utilisation.

“We are looking forward to creating partnerships, increase our market base and even explore international markets to increase our capacity utilisation,” he said, adding that they were currently exporting only one product with the rest going to the domestic market.

“At the moment we are only exporting one product which is cotton meal, it is a byproduct that we get when we manufacture our cooking oil and it is used to make stockfeed, so we export it to South Africa and it has been doing well on the market”.

Bernstein Clothing marketing assistant Rejoice Dera said they look forward to creating new markets through interaction with different corporate business people.

“As a company we are expecting to create new markets from across the board as people will be visiting our stand. We are also looking forward to meeting our customers so that we know what types of products they want and then we can supply,” she said.

Dera said after the trade fair, they expect to have generated linkages, contacts and partnerships with other companies.

She said the clothing industry had been facing challenges due to an influx of imports but applauded Zimbabweans as they have realised that local products are of good quality.

“The influx of imports has affected us a lot but I want to thank Zimbabweans because they have realised that our products are of a good quality and they now appreciate them,” said Dera.

She said there is a bright future for the clothing industry if there were enough investors.