The Sunday News
BULAWAYO City Council’s Ingwebu Breweries will introduce sorghum meal as part of its diversification programme, a few weeks after it launched another new product Royal Mahewu under a 2,1 million rand ($174 342) expansion project.
Ingwebu Breweries general manager-brewery, Mr Nkosana Prince Ndlovu said as part of the company’s efforts to boost its coffers it had to introduce two new products — a non-alcoholic sorghum beverage, Royal Mahewu, which is already on the market while its sorghum meal, the Royal Sorghum Meal will be launched soon.
“We have invested ZAR 2,1 million in new equipment to manufacture Mahewu, and the product went into the market in February. We are already milling sorghum meal, which is also coming into the market,” Mr Ndlovu said.
He said the company partnered with a local milling company for the production of its sorghum meal.
“We are still building up on our capacity, but we are in the market and we shall satisfactorily supply the retailers who hold our products. “The sorghum for our milling project comes from our well established outgrowers’ scheme and we have teamed up with a local miller to begin with,” Mr Ndlovu said.
He said diversifying was part of the company’s growth strategies aimed at significantly increasing performance (sales or market share) beyond past levels of performance. Ingwebu’s capacity utilisation in the beer plant is 42 percent and requires $4 million to refurbish the brewery plant and increase distribution vehicles.
“Our major constraint is lack of market liquidity, dampening demand as well as restricting lines of credit, forcing cash transactions, which tend to retard business. We are eyeing markets in the Midlands (for our non-alcoholic beverage and sorghum meal), and are already selling beer there,” Mr Ndlovu said.
Ingwebu has been surviving for over 100 years by producing sorghum beer only and this lack of innovation itself has been a cause for concern just like its failure to grow its market outside Bulawayo and its environs.Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Mr Charles Msipa said the diversification strategy taken by Ingwebu was one of the pivotal ways of ensuring a firm’s growth in the wake of a turbulent economy.
“The diversification strategy taken by Ingwebu is a very good innovation as this shows their resourcefulness and creativeness. Many companies that have endured hard times have managed to be adaptive to the environment which they operate in through being innovative by way of introducing new products as well as establishing new markets for the same. I therefore wish Ingwebu well and hope that other companies follow suit,” Mr Msipa said.
