Zimglass resumes production

Published: 10 October 2013

The country's sole glass manufacturing firm, Zimbabwe Glass Industries (Zimglass), has resumed production of flint glass soft drinks bottles which will be supplied to leading beverage manufacturer Delta Beverages.

In an interview, Zimglass public relations executive Mr Derek Sibanda said the Gweru- based company, which reopened last year after suspending operations for about three years, had resumed production of flint glass soft drink bottles on Monday last week.

"We have resumed the production of flint glass soft drink bottles. There is high demand of flint glass bottles at Delta Beverages. This is because there is high demand of soft drinks in summer," he said.

Mr Sibanda said Zimglass would be producing 2 100 tonnes of flint glass containers per month until March next year.

"We are not operating at full capacity at the moment, but we are able to produce 2 100 tonnes of flint glass soft drink containers per month," he said.

Mr Sibanda said Zimglass, which has a workforce of about 350, had re-engaged all the workers that were sent on unpaid leave when the company suspended operations in 2010.

"We have a workforce of about 350. These are the workers that the company had before it suspended operations back in 2010. When we reopened last year, all workers were re-engaged," he said.

Mr Sibanda said Zimglass was gradually recovering from the challenges emanating from the illegal sanctions imposed on the company.

He said the sanctions had adversely affected both production and the market.

"We used to export our products to Europe before the illegal sanctions were imposed on us. This adversely affected production at the company. We were no longer eligible to sell our products on the international market.

"We are working on scaling up production and we are slowly recovering from the liquidity challenges," he said.

Zimglass is set to produce about 12 600 tonnes of flint glass soft drink containers between this month and March next year.

The company suspended operations in September 2010 to embark on a refurbishment exercise of the blast furnace as well as replace outmoded equipment.

- herald