Harare — THE reporting season entered its second week last week with very few companies releasing meaningful results.

A number of Annual General Meetings and Extraordinary General Meetings have also been slated for this month as businesses struggle to come up with growth strategies.

Recently, Gulliver Consolidated Industries gave a lacklustre trade update while Celsys Limited was impressive on the market.

The engineering giant's sales for the first four months to January 31 2010 were US$1,2 million and the group is forecasting to turn over US$15 million to US$20 million for the year.

The group's low sales have been attributed to low working capital, a problem management believe they will solve in the coming months.

Lysaght Steel Merchants, which produced an average of 30 tonnes of steel per month, are expected to start turning over 300 tonnes per month as they improve their working capital position.

Industrial Galvanising & Fabric, who also suffered from erratic power outages over and above the working capital shortages.

Gulliver however forecast to increase production and introduce other products such as coating to the galvanised products.

The plant hire business had been crippled by poorly managed contracts, which led them to high debt levels with the National Railways of Zimbabwe.

Gulliver is in the process of converting their business model to have petroleum tankers and are in negotiations on how to settle their debt with the NRZ.

Their flagship steel business is forecasted to turn over US$12 million this year from strategic partnerships, which are currently under negotiations.

This division looks set to benefit from construction work mainly at mines and farms.

The group was sitting on a US$1,5 million debt and they have currently applied for an extra US$2 million and seek to hold debt at a maximum of US$5 million.

Gulliver has got potential to grow business once construction work increases to previous highs.

However, this is likely to take a very long time as focus is on more pressing issues such as mitigating the socio-economic situation.

Meanwhile, Celsys indicated that they were shifting from their traditional businesses of security printing to more commercial printing.

This was mainly because of the shift in appetite for products such as cheque books in Zimbabwe, where they indicated that they used to produce up to 10 000 books per month but have struggled to meet the 1 000 books per month mark.

Celsys has aggressively improved their printing equipment and have received up to US$950 000 from parent company LonZim for this cause.

Celsys' expenses seem sticky downwards and could come to US$716 352 if last year's average monthly costs are to be incurred.