The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
Diversified group, Ngamla Professionals (Private) Limited is working on expanding its business by opening a new supermarket on the outskirts of Bulawayo.
Ngamla Professionals under their retail division in July opened a supermarket in the Bulawayo Central Business District. The group’s manager Mr Philani Tshuma, said they were working on expanding and opening a bigger supermarket.
“With relaxed Covid-19 pandemic measures and extended working hours, we find it a bit more palatable for business. As we continue to get more business, we are working on expanding to something much bigger. The supermarket we recently opened is relatively small if compared to other supermarkets within the CBD, our aim is to have a much bigger one. We are currently working on that at the moment on the outskirts of the city,” said Mr Tshuma.
He said their vision was to allow customers to buy groceries online, collect in store or have them delivered, buy a gift voucher, redeem groceries and cash (forex) in store. Mr Tshuma said they were also supporting locals through acquiring good quality affordable products so as to be competitive on the market.
He said business was picking up though when they started off it was a bit slow due to the working business hours which were a bit shorter and most people could not get into the city center due to roadblocks. Mr Tshuma said they were inaccessible to a lot of their clients, hence the need to expand and be of easy reach.
Under their distribution division he said: “We also have a farm 80 kilometers out of Bulawayo along Plumtree Road. It’s called the Ngamla Chicken Farm we have a capacity of about 45 000 chickens and in a few weeks’ time we will be producing about 26 000 birds that we aim to distribute to our supermarket as well as wholesale to other clients.”
Mr Tshuma said they also linked with producers and suppliers of bulk products which they then sold at a relatively economic price in bulk to bigger clients and some shops.
Under the logistics division he said they had a number of trucks that ranged from 10 tonner to 30 tonner trucks.
“We actually do jobs for other companies that do not have their own trucks so currently we have two major contractors with Schweppes and Delta as they are using some of our trucks.”
Mr Tshuma said the company was also working on developing their in-house brands.
He said they started off with cleaners and had several products that they would like to introduce to the market with the Ngamla brand on them.
“So hopefully we will be able to supply other outlets as well and spread the Ngamla brand.”
