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Busisa Moyo

Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
BULAWAYO-based agro-processing firm United Refineries Limited (URL)’s soap brands will soon be back on the market as the company eyes increased market share.
The re-introduction of the brands, which were suspended a few years ago, is set to stimulate the entity’s growth with management saying it was already working with experts from South Africa to engineer the soaps.

“We’re re-launching Image, Vogue and Fresh Health Joy brands. These brands used to be there on the market.
“The brands will be available on the market in the last quarter and we’ve partnered with some PhD students from South Africa to engineer these soaps for the African skin. So these soaps will be very special,” URL chief executive officer Busisa Moyo said.

The move comes as the stockfeed maker has increased its capacity utilisation to above 70 percent capacity on cooking oil division and about 40 percent on soap division.

Soap production levels were lower due to a recent shortage of tallow, a critical raw material the company was importing from South Africa.
Before the shortage of the raw material in South Africa, the soap division operated at 70 percent capacity.

Moyo said they were looking forward to improving capacity utilisation in the soap division adding the firm needed about $3 million capital injection for retooling.

“We need about $3 million to re-do our factory and get it to international standards. We’re working with what we’ve so we’re not crying to say we need the money.
“We’ve kept the factory open although it’s not efficient as we would like. But it works, we’ve had few problems and we’ve replaced some few sections but in order for us to be really the player that we want to be we need $3 million for capital equipment,” Moyo added.

Recently the company announced it had set aside $2 million for soya bean contract farming this cropping season to improve the supply of the raw material and boost its production levels.

The project that will involve farmers in Umguza and Jotsholo in Lupane has seen United Refineries partnering with some local banks to put some soya growing under hectarage close to Bulawayo.
At present URL is getting soya beans from Chinhoyi, which makes the cost of production higher.

The firm requires 96,000 tonnes of oil seed annually but was only accessing about 50 percent of its requirement locally.