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Michael Tome, Harare Bureau
The supply of soft drinks is set to improve significantly next month as Delta Corporation takes delivery of critical raw material.

This is after the company received foreign currency from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe through engagement initiatives between Government and the firm.

The delivery of raw material will come at a time when the company had closed three of its soft drink plants, including the one in Graniteside in Harare after reportedly running out of critical raw material.

One of the biggest companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, Delta, says it is facing operational challenges due to foreign currency shortages prevailing in the country and recently it suggested to sell its products in forex, a decision that was reversed after Government intervention.

As such, the company claims it has been operating at 30 percent capacity for the past four months. However, expectations are high that the foreign exchange situation will ease as the tobacco marketing season opens in March.

Speaking to journalists during a tour of the company by Industry’s and Commerce Minister Nqobizitha Ndlovu, Delta Corporation’s corporate affairs director Mr Alex Makamure said the raw material consignment expected in the country is sufficient to cover a month.

“There is a structure that we are working on which will allow us to bring some kind of raw material supply in the next week or so, but won’t be enough maybe until we get to the tobacco marketing season.

“The order we are talking about will be shipped sometime next week towards the first week of February and will only cover one month,” Mr Makamure said.

He indicated that his company was finding it hard to operate on a normal level to the extent of shutting down three of its factories as the
trading update revealed the business slumped by 60 percent from the prior comparable period.

“Facilities that we are working on, will benefit our sparkling beverages business which is currently limping. As we speak the Graniteside plant has not been running for about two weeks.

“If you saw our trading update, soft drink business was down 60 percent on prior year. It’s a catastrophe from that perspective, we are making losses in soft drink business as we speak.

“We understand that forex is in short supply in the country and this is tough.

“For soft drinks, as we speak, three factories are on shutdown because we have run out of key raw materials. So for the past four months, we have been limping along at about 30 percent capacity because of lack of raw material,” said Mr Makamure.

The minister heard this on Friday when he was on a tour of the three companies to monitor their performance and get first hand appreciation of challenges being encountered in the special economic zones (in case of Davipel) and the business environment in general.