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INNSCOR Africa’s bakery unit — Bakers Inn — is targeting to increase its market share to at least 55 percent this year. The bread producer’s market share rose to around 44 percent in July last year from 37 percent previously. Bakers Inn chief executive Ngoni Mazango said he expects the company to make further inroads in Zimbabwe’s bread market.

“We want to move our market share to between at least 50 and 55 percent. I understand that if you talk to other businesspeople they will tell you that average spend a day is dwindling, companies are closing and all that, but we’re very optimistic that we can achieve that 55 percent market share by producing 600,000 loaves a day, which is our internal set target,” said Mazango.

Bakers Inn is currently producing 500,000 loaves a day. The CEO said the company was not planning any new investment this year to boost production capacity as it already has a plant on stand-by that has the potential to meet the targeted volumes.

“Basically, we’ve another plant which is on stand-by with a capacity of another 100,000 loaves a day, so in terms of expansion in Zimbabwe we’ve a plant, which is able to cater for any incremental volumes,” he said.

Mazango was speaking during the launch of a two-pronged promotion for traders and consumers, respectively. The traders’ competition is basically a volume growth-based promotion that encourages traders to stock more of the Bakers Inn bread and thus boost their margins, while the consumer competition is basically an off-take strategy for the company’s products on the stalls.—BH24