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Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter

THE Bulawayo Municipal Commercial Undertaking (BMCU)-run Ingwebu Breweries has emerged from the woods after embarking on a successful turnaround strategy that has seen the beverages producer introducing new products in the market this year.

In 2019, Bulawayo City Council, which owns the entity, announced that it had privatised Ingwebu Breweries as part of a strategy to turn around the previously loss-making commercial undertaking into a financially sound private company.

Through the implementation of its turnaround strategy, Ingwebu has this year also managed to improve on its capacity utilisation to 95 percent from 65 percent in the previous years, senior management said. 

“2019 has been a very difficult year for most businesses and indeed Ingwebu hasn’t been spared. However, we have had our management team doing a good job and working very well under those difficult circumstances,” Ingwebu Breweries chairman Mr Concern Sibanda said in an interview.

“We have managed to turn Ingwebu around, 2019 is probably going to be the first year after quite a few that Ingwebu has made a reasonable profit. The environment has been so difficult but we have worked hard to survive and indeed we have done reasonably well.”

In a separate interview, the beverages manufacturer’s managing director Mr Dumisani Mhlanga concurred saying that despite the challenges the business faced, they were optimistic to maintain a viable and profitable trajectory going forward. 

“Basically, our main product is opaque beer and when we began the year we had our 2-litre calabash, which really has carried our business so much, but we also rely on our bulk beer that we supply to the retail outlets that we franchised out and they do contribute quite some significant volumes.

“We are looking at about 15 to 16 percent that we sell through the retail outlets. So, when we started the year it was just the bulk and calabash and somewhere along the year, we then introduced the smaller one, we were calling it baby calabash and the people that consume it prefer to call it “MaNdlovu”.

“The 2 litre calabash is called Ndlovu and the 1,5 litre is MaNdlovu,” he said.

Mr Mhlanga said they will continue to push more volumes of their products that now include amahewu, which Ingwebu also launched two months ago.

 “That amahewu is supplied to most retail outlets and we have taken it to as far as Masvingo, Zvishavane and recently we were in Victoria Falls.

“We went with a big truck there with about 1 500 cases and the product was accepted very well by the market. There is also great potential for us to grow that product and we are very excited about it,” he said.

Mr Mhlanga would not be drawn into divulging the volumes they were pushing in the market citing professional reasons.

“But what I can tell you is that if you look at our main product line (opaque beer) we’ve had a good growth over the previous year in terms of volumes.

“We were looking at growth of about six to seven percent. I think given the obtaining trading environment, that’s not something that is easy to achieve. We hope to push more volumes in 2020,” said Mr Mhlanga. — @okazunga.