By William Milasi

Power shortages and low capacity utilization are some of the critical challenges dogging Kwekwe-based top milk processor Dendairy.

The company’s Executive Director Daryl Archibald speaking in an interview recently said inconsistent power supply has greatly affected the plant.

“Currently we are producing an average of 3 million litres of milk per month, that is long life milk, fruit juice, yogurt, fermented milk being maas and ice cream amongst other products. We have the capacity to produce 10 million litres but we are hovering between 30-35% at the moment,” he said.

He said the dairy sector has been hit by a tumultuous period caused by Covid-19, and post-Covid-19 recovery.

“Our focus is on getting our product back to the market given the tumultuous situation we have been in. On our side, raw milk is picking up and that raw milk will mean we can build into the capacity,” he said.

Turning to power, he said its one of the biggest challenges.

“Power is a big challenge, we have a drop system which we use to dissect power so as to provide uninterrupted power supply to the factory. We have mitigated the problem through the use of generators but it is costly to run a generator,” he said.

Recently Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Leanid Zeats visited the milk processor and said Belarus is prepared to assist the country in terms of milk production.

“It’s a state-of-the-art enterprise that 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 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 litres per month at full capacity, and now it’s 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, 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 have the capacity to produce more milk and dairy-related products so this is what we want to tape 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.