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Nqobile Tshili, Business Correspondent

BULAWAYO-based pharmaceutical company, Zimbabwe Pharmaceuticals (ZimPharm), says it is struggling to operate efficiently due to ageing equipment and requires about US$300 000 for retooling so that it can operate at 100 percent capacity.

Managing director Mr Tawengwa Mukuhlani said in an interview that the company is operating at 45 percent capacity utilisation.

The failure to operate at full capacity by companies in the sector has resulted in country procuring most of their drugs externally with some pharmacies now charging their clients in foreign currency. 

Mr Mukuhlani said access to foreign currency was seriously stifling the pharmaceutical company’s growth. 

“We are in dire need of retooling of our equipment. We need substantial investment, the main challenge being access to foreign currency to get the equipment into the country,” he said. 

“If we are to bring pieces of equipment, they will naturally come from outside the country and that will require foreign currency.

“We need Government’s support, we need to partake in the retooling exercise that the Government said they will roll out for industry.”

Industry and Commerce Deputy Minister Raj Modi last week visited ZimPharm and other industries in the city to get a first hand appreciation of its operational situation.

“We took the Deputy Minister through the whole facility showing him the equipment that we are using and to a larger extent it is fairly old, although it’s doing the job. For our size we need US$300 000,” he said. 

“The aim of every company is to produce at 100 percent capacity but at the moment we are looking at operational levels at around 45 percent.

“Our limitation is twofold, we need more product lines and for us to have more product lines we need the ideal equipment. Secondly, with the equipment that we have, it has its limitations for the product that we have. Once we have appropriate equipment we can add our product line and we can increase our efficiencies and that will naturally increase our production levels.”

Mr Mukuhlani said hope was not lost as the company was involved in various partnership opportunities in knowledge sharing with foreign organisations.

He said problems affecting his company were not peculiar but affected the entire pharmaceutical sector.

Mr Mukuhlani said although he appreciated that most of the pharmaceutical companies were getting their raw materials externally, they should find ways of making their products accessible in local currency.

– @nqotshili