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NewsDay

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Gushungo Holdings grows market share

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PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s family dairy company has stepped up efforts to claim market share in the highly competitive sector after it embarked on an aggressive marketing drive.

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s family dairy company has stepped up efforts to claim market share in the highly competitive sector after it embarked on an aggressive marketing drive.

Report by Tarisai Mandizha

Alpha Omega, a subsidiary of Gushungo Holdings — an empire owned by the first family — this week announced that it was carrying a recruitment exercise for sales, marketing and distribution and 300 vendors to boost the company’s market presence.

The decision to grow market share comes after First Lady Grace Mugabe launched the multi-million-dollar project becoming one of the biggest rivals to big brands such as Nestlé Zimbabwe and Dairibord Zimbabwe Limited.

Alpha Omega produces a wide range of dairy products that have already flooded the local market.

Until recently, imported milk products from neighbouring South Africa had dominated the shelves of the country’s supermarkets.

“We are looking for people who want to join our sales, marketing and distribution department as well as vendors to sell our products in Mazowe and Harare on commission,” the company said in a Press notice. Alpha Omega general manager Stanley Nhari yesterday told NewsDay in an interview that the company was targeting Matabeleland province as well in the expansion exercise.

“We are on an expansion drive and we are graduating from an upcoming company to a big company,” he said. “Our thrust is to create employment in the areas where we operate, instead of importing general labour. We recruit from where we operate.”

Nhari said the company was working on a number of new products that would soon be released onto the market. He, however, could not shed more light.

Currently, processes from milking, product-making and packaging are done through automated equipment.

According to recent media reports the company — which has 500 employees — produces about 300 000 litres of raw milk and 70 000 litres of yoghurt monthly.