By William Milasi

Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Leanid Zeats has said Belarus is prepared to cover the country’s milk deficit by helping the country with raw milk production and also giving milk to the country.

Speaking during the tour of Kwekwe-based milk processing giant Dendairy recently, Zeats said Belarus is prepared to assist the country in terms of milk production.

Zeats toured other milking companies in the country which are Nestle and Dairiboard.

Speaking of Dendairy, Zeats said, “It’s a state-of-the-art enterprise which produces dairy milk and fulfills supplies to the consumers. We have seen modern technology from Scandinavia, we have also seen one of the best packing materials.”

He however noted that the company is employing a few people.

“We have seen that the company employs a few people as it is fully automated. That’s why we believe the quality of the product is very high,” he said.

In terms of future prospects Zeats said, Belarus was prepared to develop the milk processing plant.

“We would propose to develop this. What is also needed is to develop agriculture to provide, raw milk to such enterprises. We have got to know that only 30% capacity is operational so they need a lot of raw milk and Belarus can help with producing this raw milk and give raw milk to such enterprises. There is a lot of milk needed to make this enterprise work at full capacity. The operation is 10 million liters per month at full capacity, and now it is only 3 million,” he said.

Agriculture Deputy Minister Vangelis Haritatos said the government was excited with the promises made by Belarus.

“We have been with His Excellency the Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus taking him around to some farms. What is critical

is that we need to ensure that we utilize our full capacity as a country as we heard from colleagues from Dendairy.

“There are only at 30% capacity what we hear from the Belarusians is that they are very keen to help us close the deficit as well as help the local companies to produce to full capacity. When we get to full capacity in terms of production capacity that means we are exporting. You can tell the level of relationship that we have with the Belarusians, they have superior genetics which we want to tap into, and they have good technology and knowledge and we want to tap into that. We want to bring everything  together technology and expertise, we want to help our farmers the challenge is the production

of raw milk in Zimbabwe.

“Our local companies can produce more milk and dairy-related products so this is what we want to tap into he was very impressed and we want to give the world

the correct impression of Zimbabwe, we know what we want but we want a little support to get to full milk self sufficiency,” he said.