Jojo tanks demand soars

09 Jun, 2019 - 00:06 0 Views
Jojo tanks demand soars

The Sunday News

Sibonginkosi Mpofu, Business Reporter

THE demand for Jojo tanks has gone up in Bulawayo as residents seek water reservoirs in the wake of water shedding by the city council. 

Jojo Tanks Suppliers administrator Mrs Sue Alderton said that sales for their products have gone up in the past months as people seek to keep water to use in times of water shedding.

Bulawayo City Council has introduced water shedding that has seen some suburbs going for days without water. 

In some cases, bowsers provided by the council supply water to the residents.

“Keeping up with the high demands has been a hustle as demand has doubled from 600 tanks to 1 200 a month and this has put pressure on production. We have now increased working hours from 16 hours to 24 hours a day and added more employees. 

“We supply our product to various shops in the city. We have had to buy two more three-tonne trucks to deliver the tanks. Fuel shortages have not affected work because there was fuel we had stored but the issue of foreign currency remain a challenge,” she said. 

Factory manager Mr Leonard Tagwirei also added that failure to meet demand was also due to shortage of raw materials.

“Importation of raw materials like virgin plastic has been the major challenge in meeting the high demand of tanks. There are delays at the border with regards to inspection and declaration that makes it impossible to provide enough tanks at a specific time. Besides using the middlemen between Sasol South Africa and the company has also delayed raw materials. 

“On a normal basis, the company produces 300 tanks a month stored in the yard but because of failure to keep up with the high demand of tanks every product produced has an owner. The foreign currency challenge affected us severely to the fact that we opted for a local supplier in order to be able to get raw materials in the local currency,” he said.

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