Zimpapers Logo

Flora Fadzai Sibanda, Chronicle Reporter

WHEN 19 villagers from Nkayi started making cooking oil in 2021, it was easy coming with a name for their product, they did not look far, settling for their village’s name.

The Ziminya Feedlot cooking oil was born and members have a dream that their product will spread nationally.

Cooperative members, five women and 19 men work together in making the cooking oil using sunflower.

The cooperative was formed in 2019 but the idea to manufacture local cooking oil for sale came in July 2021.

They were inspired after learning that back in 1996, there was a group from the same district that used to make cooking oil from the same building they are using now.

The group’s enterprise, whose operations were manual, later folded.

The Ziminya cooperative has a machine that they use to make cooking oil, thanks to a local Non-Governmental Organisation that offered them part of the funds to buy the equipment.

In an interview, the chairperson of Ziminya cooperative Mr Evans Masuku said they have come a long way.

“The business is opening many doors for us as a cooperative. When we started it in 2019, we used to exchange stock feed for cattle as there was drought and a lot of animals were suffering. After the drought ended, we lost business so we decided to sell sugar and green bar soaps we were buying from South Africa. We were not happy with the money we got from the business. Someone jokingly told one of our members that there was a group of women in 1996 who used to make cooking oil. We decided to inquire more about cooking oil manufacturing,” he said.

Mr Masuku said they approached a local non-governmental organisation, Matabeleland Enhanced Livelihoods, Agriculture and Nutrition Adaptation (MELANA) that has been supplying sunflower seed to villagers in various districts and cooking oil manufacturing machines as a way of encouraging local people to make their own oil.

“Some old people still had memories of how they used to make the cooking oil and they shared it with us. However, we realised that using the manual machine was difficult as it took longer to finish the product. We approached MELANA to assist us with information of the machines we could use since we had heard that they had been helping a lot of villagers. They managed to get a machine for us at a cheaper price as we only paid 30 percent of the original price and they settled the other remaining 70 percent for us.”

With the  machine, they started making the cooking oil.

 “We started making 750 ml units of cooking oil which we sold in the district. After some time, we realised the 750 bottles were not selling that much so we decided to try selling the two litre bottles,” he said.

Mr Masuku said business has been good and in a month they can manufacture a minimum of 200 litres.

He said they gave their cooking oil a local name as a way of ensuring that everyone knew that even people from the rural areas are good at cooking oil manufacturing.

 “We named our cooking oil Ziminya Feedlot. This was to inform everyone that it was produced by local people from the rural areas as people sometimes buy it for their relatives who live outside our district,” he said.

 The Ziminya cooperative chairman said they get their sunflower from local farmers around the district.

 “We buy sunflower from surrounding farms. There are farmers who sell the sunflower. This makes it easy for us to do our job as we do not pay a lot of money for transportation. It also boosts business for our local people as we use local resources,” said Mr Masuku.

He said they sell their cooking oil cheaper than other brands as they want everyone to afford it.

“Our two-litre bottles are sold at US$5. This is cheaper as compared to the other brands. We made it affordable so that it could be affordable for everyone. It is being sold from various shops in our business centre,” said Mr Masuku.

“We make a minimum of 200 litres a month. From the 200 litres we sell a minimum of 150 litres. Business is good especially now as we are approaching the stokvel season. We sometimes even do double the load to meet demand,” he said.

Mr Masuku said the plastic bottles they use are bought from a company in Bulawayo.

 “We buy new bottles from a bottle manufacturing company for packaging. We also print our logo which we stick on the bottles. We package the cooking oil at our warehouse and seal it there using a machine that we bought from town.

“We hope the product will be recognised nationally and we get more customers,” he said.–@flora_sibanda