The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Business Reporter
THE country’s bakers will meet the demand for bread this festive season due to the population’s continuous change in consumption habits mostly being influenced by low income among many most households, an official said.
National Bakers Association of Zimbabwe presiden, Mr Givemore Mesoemvura said the country’s bakeries had made major investments in procuring equipment to increase their production to meet the country’s bread demand.
He also said the bread intake by families had significantly dropped to about 600 000 loaves per day as bread was being substituted by other cheaper foodstuffs.
Bread is losing its footing to substitutes like sweet potatoes, potatoes, butternuts, pumpkins, rice and tomato stew as well as boiled sugar beans, cow peas and roundnuts all mixed with maize kernels.
This development, together with increasing health consciousness among consumers, has certainly slashed the demand for bread. Economic hardships are also prompting many households to think creatively about how to save the elusive US dollar.
“We are definitely going to meet the demand of bread in this coming festive season because people are no longer consuming bread as they used to do 20 years ago and before. The consumption rate of bread has significantly dropped due to a wide range of food substitutes.
“It also has to be noted that most of the bakeries have invested heavily in equipment to increase their production to the extent that we have upped our capacity so much that there is now an oversupply. That’s why you are even seeing bakeries trying to outsmart each other through advertising and promotions,” Mr Mesoemvura said.
He said the country’s bakeries are producing around one million loaves a day. Zimbabwe has more than 257 operational bakers with Lobels and Bakers’ Inn being the biggest two. One of Bulawayo’s fastest growing indigenous bakeries Double Fresh Bakery said in the wake of competition and as part of promoting their products, its loaf will go down to 80 cents between 1 December to 31 January next year.
The company has been operating for nine years and produces about 8 000 of its Triple Bread loaves a day and enjoys part of the market niche in Bulawayo’s upmarket shops and small retails around the city.
“We are going to reduce our price of bread to 70 cents a loaf and we expect shops to be selling it at 80 cents. The whole essence of this is to show our customers that we owe much of our existence in business to them thus this is a little token or present we have for them for this festive season.
“There is a tendency by some retailers of desisting to pass the reduction to the consumers but we plead with them to reduce at the same margin that we will have done to them. We are quite aware that at this time of the year bread is in demand but as a company we took it upon ourselves to give our customers to save little from their hard earned cash,” said the company’s managing director, Mr Mnothisi Nsingo.
He said as part of its pre-promotion drive the company has embarked on a number of bread tasting road shows in the Central Business District.
“All our types of bread (white, brown and whole wheat) have been well received on the market and their weight is the one which is recommended by Trade Measures and to sum it up they’ve a longer shelf life. We are also planning to introduce confectioneries soon,” Mr Nsingo said.
