Carbonated beverages maker-Varum Beverages Zimbabwe is banking on President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s commitment of a 10 hectare piece of land before venturing into fruit and dairy juice production as part of its diversification strategy, 263Chat Business has learnt.
The firm, a subsidiary of Indian based Varum Beverage Limited opened its Pepsi manufacturing plant in Zimbabwe in 2018.
However, following a series of expansion projects that includes a water purification and bottle manufacturing plants, Varum Beverages has since run out of space at its Ardbennie premises in Harare.
“Right now we are waiting for the President to give us new land because there is no more land left in this premises. Once we get the land we are looking at making juice and dairy products,” Varum Beverages Zimbabwe chairman, Ravi Jaipuria told 263Chat on the sidelines of the commissioning of the new plastic closure production line.
“His Excellency has allotted the land to us and we now have to get it marked and get the land hopefully it will happen in the next month. Its 10 hectares along Masvingo road.”
Jaipuria could not however divulge finer details of the land deal, including the exact location but quickly stressed the need for the company to expand its footprint into other sectors.
“With the future revenue and profits generated from the sale of carbonated drinks we are already looking at avenues of reinvestment like juices, dairy, education, healthcare and hospitality hence further supporting the Zimbabwean community,” said Jaipuria.
President Mnangagwa has been on a drive to lure external investors into the country since assuming power in 2017 and has sometimes been accused of usurping the role of the Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency (ZIDA) which is mandated to provide for the promotion, entry, protection and facilitation of investments.
Varum recently completed its plastic bottle closure production line expected to save the group about US$ 50 million in imports.
“Preforms and caps on average we are looking at about 10 US cents per piece and we are using about 500 million caps annually so you do the maths on how much we have saved. Of course the raw material will have to be imported so the cost is much lower because we are not paying for the thread and the value added that we are doing here and also we are exporting caps to Zambia and other plans,” said Jaipuria.
