INNSCOR Africa’s bakery unit, Baker’s Inn, says sales grew up by 15% after the launch of its sales promotion, which ended last month.
BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
In an interview with NewsDay on the sidelines of the company’s “Buy and Win” promotion draw on Saturday in Gwanda, Baker’s Inn chief executive officer, Ngoni Mazango said the promotion was a success despite economic challenges besetting the nation.
“I want to thank Zimbabweans for the support they have given us as a business. We had resounding success during this promotion, which has seen our volumes also increasing during this period when we were running this promotion,” he said.
“We grew by about 15% in terms of the volumes and we are excited about that because we appreciate the economic challenges that are affecting Zimbabwe at the moment.”
Mazango said due to economic challenges, a number of people wanted to participate in their promotion, but failed. “Regardless of these challenges, we still witnessed growth of that 15%, which is very positive. Some businesses are really going backwards, but we are still having some positive growth in our business,” he said.
Mazango said they had big capacity, which was still not utilised and they were currently commanding about 44% of the market share.
“We believe as a business, we want to go to 50% market share. As I am talking right now, we have a lot of other projects lined up. We are putting another line in Bulawayo to give Bulawayo more capacity and we are putting another line in Harare to equally give more capacity to Harare as well,” he said.
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“And while I’m saying that, we will have a capacity of 800 000 loaves (of bread) a day as a business and we are happy with that. We are the biggest bakery in Zimbabwe. We also have a pie plant, which has a capacity to do 200 000 pies a day.”
Bakers Inn recently invested $8 million on the pie manufacturing plant in Harare.
It also spent $7m upgrading its 200 fleet of delivery trucks to boost distribution networks.
Mazango said they would be able to meet bread demand during the festive season and assured their customers of a stable supply.
“We have got bigger plans for 2017, but I can’t disclose much detail because our competitors will steal our ideas. We are working on trying to consolidate whatever we are doing in Zimbabwe,” he said.
Mazango said by the end of 2017, they would be commanding a 50% market share in Zimbabwe and from there, they were looking to expand into the region.
He said they had put a “lot” of money for a number of projects in 2017.
Baker’s Inn is currently awarding winners of its Buy and Win promotion, where it is giving away 11 cars, 22 refrigerators, 22 television sets, 22 solar geysers and school fees vouchers.
The promotion, which ran from September 23 to November 26, will be “bigger and better” next year, Mazango said. It will cover all provinces in the country.
Yesterday, they were in Victoria Falls in Matabeleland North, tomorrow they will be in Bulawayo, and on Thursday they will be in Kwekwe before Harare on Saturday.
“It’s a way of ploughing back to the community as our social corporate social responsibility. We believe in the Zimbabwean economy and we believe there is future in Zimbabwe,” Mazango said.
The Baker’s Inn boss urged other companies to plough back into the community just as they do.
