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Chrispen Gumunyu, Business Correspondent
NESTLE Zimbabwe remains committed to using eco-friendly packaging for all its products in a bid to promote a clean and healthy environment by 2025.

Nestle Zimbabwe corporate communication and public affairs officer, Mrs Yamurai Zhou, said they have made progress in the last few years but were still looking into other alternatives of eco-friendly packaging.

“We have transitioned our Nestle Cerevita sachet packaging to one that is designed for recycling and we continue to explore other alternative packaging materials such as paper but we also have to ensure that their performance do not compromise food quality and safety,” she said.

“We are also doing feasibility studies with a local partner to determine the viability of using 100 percent biodegradable material in order to reduce the amount of virgin plastic.”

Mrs Zhou said Nestle was also engaging with local recycling companies to find out, which materials and quantities they can recycle.

“We have assessed the infrastructure that we have as a country in terms of capacity to recycle and have engaged some players within the recycling industry to better understand what they can recycle and their capacities,” she said.

“We are using this information to help us design and renovate our packaging in order to meet our commitment by 2025.”

In 2020, Nestle Zimbabwe invested U$2,5 million in its cereals manufacturing plant expansion project in Harare, which has since resulted in throughput increase by 30 percent due to the installation of a cereals line (roller dryer 3).

Mrs Zhou said they were now looking into other investment opportunities to increase production volumes at the Harare factory.

“We have fully utilised the additional capacity that we got through installation of the third roller dryer hence we are already exploring opportunities for further investment to generate more capacity,” said Mrs Zhou.

Nestle Zimbabwe has also trained women micro distributors for their small pack product portfolio under the Zimbabwe Women Empowered in Business (ZIWEB) initiative.

Mrs Zhou said they have managed to expand the training of women micro distributors to other major cities.

“We have managed to expand the women micro distributors training and we now have active participation in Bulawayo, Gweru, Mutare and Kwekwe,” she said.

Nestle employs more than 200 permanent employees locally and many others as casual workers, merchandisers and distributors. — @chrispen_gee