CHINESE company, Livetouch Investments, has invested more than $36 million so far in cement production in Redcliff, near Kwekwe with the cement manufacturer operating at 80% capacity, an official has said.
BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
Livetouch Investments chief executive officer, Dongning Wang, told NewsDay in emailed responses that the Redcliff-based cement manufacturer was sitting on $36 million capital assets.
“Our main production has already started to run at the end of March this year (and) currently, we are sitting around $36 million of capital assets,” Wang said.
The company has a 400 000-tonne a year capacity plant, the fourth such facility in Zimbabwe, which it started to construct in June 2016 under phase one.
It has become the fourth cement producing company in the country after PPC Zimbabwe, Lafarge Zimbabwe and Sino-Zimbabwe. Wang said cash challenges were a main threat to their business.
“Yes, I think this is a national problem due to our currency and costing problems,” he said.
Wang said they have increased the workforce to over 120 from 100 they had in April this year and intend to increase it to 200, when running at full capacity.
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The company is currently operating at about 80% capacity.
Early this year, Wang revealed that at the beginning of 2018, they were targeting to produce around 60 to 70 000 tonnes of cement per year.
He said the group would also invest in clinker and copper-steel production.
PPC, which produced from Bulawayo and Gwanda, doubled its production capacity to 1,4 million tonnes after recently commissioning a new plant in Harare.
Lafarge has a 450 000t plant in Harare while Sino-Zimbabwe’s plant in Gweru can produce about 250 000t per year.
Zimbabwe currently consumes about 1,14 tonnes of cement per year. Producers have to secure markets in the region for the excess production.
