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NewsDay

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Lobels bread back on TM Supermarkets shelves

Business
TM Supermarkets has resumed stocking Lobels bread on its shelves after it ordered its outlets to stop ordering the product as it was not part of the Bargain Bonanza Promotion.

TM Supermarkets has resumed stocking Lobels bread on its shelves after it ordered its outlets to stop ordering the product as it was not part of the Bargain Bonanza Promotion.

BY TARISAI MANDIZHA

The promotion runs for two months with a grand draw at TM Pick n Pay Msasa on October 10. The supermarkets chain said it had spent $500 000 on the promotion.

TM Supermarkets chief executive officer Dharmalingum Dass told NewsDay yesterday that the situation had been resolved and the retail chain was now stocking Lobels bread.

“Lobels bread is being stocked now since Friday last week. It is being solved now and you can follow it up with Lobels,” Dass said.

lobels bread

The move comes after the Grain Millers’ Association of Zimbabwe (GMAZ) complained to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce that Lobels had begun reducing its flour intake from millers after failing to supply to TM effective August 3.

“This sudden development is significantly affecting local millers in respect of reduced flour output, left with excess raw material and in some cases has to reduce workers’ hours,” GMAZ chairperson Tafadzwa Musarara wrote in a letter dated August 13.

“We respectfully submit that the decision to bar only Lobels Bread during this promotion is unfair, illegal and bears serious negative consequences to the entire bread value chain, from a consumer perspective, it deprives product choice and manipulates a brand switch.”

The letter was also copied to Competition and Tariff Commission director Dumisani Sibanda and National Bakers’ Association president Givemore Mesoemvura.

Musarara said GMAZ as the apex body of the grain millers and the National Bakers’ Association of Zimbabwe were working within a mutually agreed and government endorsed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The MoU stipulates, among others, that all bakeries procure at least 75% of their flour requirements from local millers.

Musarara said the arrangement spurred local wheat contract farming, preserved jobs and upholds capacity utilisation on the back of the 75% local flour purchase quota.