The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
ONE of the country’s oldest manufacturers of ceramic and refractory products, Dete Industrial Ceramics in Hwange District, Matabeleland North Province is seeking a capital injection of about $1,5 million to revive its waning operations.
Dete Industrial Ceramics general manager Mr Godfree Zivanai said the company’s capacity utilisation has been on a free fall over the years owing to a subdued market for its products and obsolete machinery.
He said the company’s production capacity was estimated to be around five percent.
“We intend to get a new plant and we have made efforts to seek an investor to fund us to refurbish our plant because it’s now obsolete, this includes our crushers, extruders and other ancillary machinery.
“We need cash injection of about $1,5 million to refurbish the plant as well as putting in place a new tunnel kiln which will be used for drying and firing about 160 000 bricks a day,” said Mr Zivanai.
Dete Industrial Ceramics is a subsidiary of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) 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, which it was supplying with fire bricks for the relining of its furnaces.
It is presently manufacturing pressed and quarry floor tiles and limited quantities of bricks and pavers.
Mr Zivanai said the company has lined up meetings with various institutions involved in infrastructural development and construction projects with a view of entering into agreements to recapitalise its operations, with the ceramic and refractory producer paying back through the provision of products equivalent to the allotted funding.
“There are a number of infrastructural developments, which are taking place in the province from which we should be benefiting from, for instance construction work is going on at Lupane State University and they are getting the bricks from Bulawayo while we can be in a position to supply them. We have adequate resource in the form of clay, which is in abundance in the Gwayi area.
“There is also the Batoka Gorge hydro-electric power station construction which is coming on stream as well as a number of housing schemes that will commence in Hwange and Victoria Falls. We are anticipating to be getting business from all these projects. We are envisaging approaching institutions such as NSSA (National Social Security Authority), which are into construction to fund us then we pay back in products equivalent to the funding,” said Mr Zivanai.
NSSA, this year, established a subsidiary, National Building Society, which is expected to take over the pension fund’s land bank for construction of low cost housing across the country.
“We (the country) are having to import makoro bricks from Botswana while we have the clay to do those types of bricks with the only challenge being having the requisite machinery to produce them,” said Mr Zivanai.
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. It is also pinning its hopes on the revival and viability of its parent organisation, IDC’s tourism enterprises namely the New Game Reserve Hotel and Detema Safari Lodge which are situated in the district to utilise off spills accrued from the two entities to improve production at Dete Industrial Ceramics.
“IDC is also looking to come up with an initiative whereby it attracts players in the tourism sector especially those that are into game drives, hunting safaris, casino, camping and car hire to partner it in the running of its two tourism facilities or even putting up their own infrastructure, the intention being to channel some of the finances realised from those ventures to enhance business at the ceramic and refractory plant,” said Mr Zivanai.
He said the company’s potential lucrative export deal to Botswana has all but fallen through after its client cited cumbersome importation requirements by the country’s authorities.
Early last year the company exported its Gwayi tiles to Botswana and fire bricks to Zambia and had received a number of inquiries from the two countries.
