Dete Industrial Ceramics hit by stiff competition

06 Apr, 2014 - 09:04 0 Views
Dete Industrial Ceramics hit by stiff competition

The Sunday News

Dumisani Nsingo Business Reporter
ONE of the country’s oldest manufacturers of ceramic and refractory products, Dete Industrial Ceramics’ capacity utilisation has fallen to below 30 percent owing to obsolete machinery and stiff competition from imported merchandise. Dete Industrial Ceramics is a subsidiary of the Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe (IDCZ) and started operating in 1989.
The company used to be a major supplier of refractory or fire bricks.

Its biggest customers were mostly iron smelting companies notably Ziscosteel (now NewZimsteel) which it was supplying with fire bricks for the relining of its furnaces.

However, the demise of the country’s industries over the years has seen Dete Industrial Ceramics’ production levels falling to their lowest ebb with capacity utilisation estimated at around 25 to 30 percent.

Due to depressed business, the company has over the years been forced to retrench part of its workforce from a high of 200 in 2007 to only 20 employees to date.

“We are operating with very obsolete equipment, which continuously breaks down, which basically doesn’t need repairs but a complete overhaul. All the machinery that we have is old it has been here since the 1980s.

“If we are to fully recapitalise we are looking at around $500 000 and if we are to embark on extensive brick manufacturing as we have planned, we need to have a plant being set up at Gwayi with a dedicated bulldozer and front end loader. At the moment we are extracting clay there manually and moving it with a lorry,” said the company’s general manager, Mr Godfree Zivanai.

The company mines its clay in Gwayi, a distance of about 40 kilometres to its plant in Dete.
It is presently manufacturing pressed and quarry floor tiles and limited quantities of bricks and pavers.

“At the moment we are producing 800 square metres of tiles per month but if we had better machinery we can produce 2 000 square metres but the challenge will be the market. We are facing stiff competition from Asian products. There is a lot of construction activity in high density suburbs and that’s the market we are focusing on.

“Most of our clients are from affluent suburbs. We have tried to market our products in high density suburbs with little success. Our products fit in every aspect of a home and people have to understand that the Asian tiles only last for three to four years and after that start having pacts while our products are durable and don’t change their appearance,” Mr Zivanai said.

He said as part of the company’s marketing strategy, the company was now into online advertising.
The company is in the process of constructing a new rectangular kiln, which has the capacity to produce  100 000 clay bricks.

“We are looking forward to completing this kiln in June. We have finished the walls now we will be producing bricks for the roof. Looking at Matabeleland North there is a serious need for bricks and that’s the reason we are putting up that kiln,” Mr Zivanai said.

The company’s plant comprises rotary kilns with a capacity of producing 15 000 bricks each but efforts were being made to destroy two of them for the setting up of another rectangular one.

A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Various industries and trades use kilns to harden objects made from clay into pottery, bricks among others.
Hwange Rural District Council chairperson, Ms Siphiwe Mapfuwa, said there was a need to recapitalise Dete Industrial Ceramics to deal with the problem of unemployment.

“Dete Industrial Ceramics is struggling although it’s still producing it’s not doing so at its full capacity and there is a need for it to be recapitalised. In its prime it was one of the district’s major employers.

“The company has since fallen on hard times but we need it back because a lot of our youths are unemployed,” she said.

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