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Zimbabwe: Charhons Diversifies Production
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Financial Gazette (Harare)
8 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Shame Makoshori Staff Reporter
Harare
BISCUITS manufacturer, Charhons Limited has intensified the diversification of its products range as it moves to capture segments of the luxury foods market that could relieve the business from the strain associated with biscuits making.
Charhons has an interesting mix of products, ranging from sweets, bubble gums, biscuits and chocolates, all small playtime foods associated with children.
But it is a cash cow whose cash generation potential has attracted some of the country's largest food processing giants.
In an interview with The Financial Gazette, Charhons managing director, Clever Sithole, said the potential to grow was big, but the effects of the current economic environment had not spared the firm.
"We have moved from relying heavily on biscuits," Sithole said.
"We have invested in packaging machines and bubble gums manufacturing machines. We have also done toll manufacturing. This has immediately turned around the business," Sithole added.
"And the chocolate business has surprised us. The valentine's chocolate is now close to the highest in terms of business," he said.
Sithole stated that Charhons, a subsidiary of Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed Cairns Holdings, was optimistic the economic problems affecting the country would pass and projected an upturn in the operations of the company.
But this upturn, he said, would be anchored by a change in the business culture to enable the firm to keep pace with the dynamics of Zimbabwe's unpredictable economic environment.
"This company was not meant for exports. We did not satisfy the local market so there was no need for exports. But there had been drips and drabs of biscuits into Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa and Botswana to generate foreign currency," he said.
He said the idea was to be self-sufficient in foreign currency generation to beef up the available capacity to manufacture for the local market that had been stunted by limited raw materials including glucose.
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He added, local suppliers of glucose had been failing to produce enough and as a result food-processing industries had been severely affected.
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