TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO
The country’s largest blanket manufacturing company, National Blankets is appealing to the government to tighten import control regulations in a bid to curb smuggling of goods in the country and help the company’s revival.
Local manufacturers are suffocating from the smuggling of cheap quality products from Asia. This has led to falling demand on locally-manufactured products.
“On paper we are protected by the law but the issue of smuggling of goods in the country has brought the fall of demand for local goods,” National Blankets business development manager Sheppard Nyambira told Business Times.
National Blankets manufactures a wide variety of products ranging from high-tech blankets such as airline blankets to quality furpile and felted products, relief blankets and woven products.
Nyambira said their raw materials, which are synthetic in nature, come from Europe and Asia. This has seen the company experiencing “intermittent stops in our production section due to a long procurement lead time of approximately 60 days”.
He said the company once received a US$500 000 loan from a local bank for recapitalisation purposes. However, the money failed to capacitate the company and it struggled to repay the loan. National Blankets needs about US$1.5m to “revitalise the company and paying back the money will not be a challenge”, Nyambira said.
He said the resuscitation of the company will help in employment creation, import substitution and value addition.
“Through massive product reengineering, we have rebranded our products to ensure that they meet the ever-changing needs of the market. At the moment the company is operating with a staff complement of 30 with target output of more than 1,5m blanket units per year,” Nyambira said.
He said the company has since bought state-of-the-art machinery, “perhaps the best in the Sadc region” and has embraced new technology in its operations, which would enable the business to produce a product range, which conforms with world-class standards.
National Blankets products range from household blankets, hotel blankets, school blankets, hospital blankets and customised corporate blankets. It is also introducing outdoor blankets as well as fashion products like poncho, Nyambira said.
