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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
Cairns Holdings Limited is planning to increase the contribution of exports to revenue from 7 percent to 20 percent over the next two years, as part of concerted efforts to grow the business. The fast moving consumer goods manufacture also sees growth in exports as a way of securing the group’s future foreign currency availability, which helped support operations prior to dollarisation.

Acting chief executive Mr Jeremiah Kwenda said in an interview last week that the export market provided a growth opportunity for the group and Cairns was probing factors constraining exports.

Mr Kwenda said that growing exports was one of the strategic growth targets Cairns was planning to pursue once the group manages to get significant fresh capital to recapitalise its operations.

He said Cairns was exporting most of its product to South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Australia and US while only negligible quantities of wines were being exported to Mozambique and the DRC.

“But, exports at the moment are not more 7 percent of revenue and this is one growth platform for us because we are not only sitting comfortably in a US dollar denominated economy, we are looking at a time when we will need to bring in foreign currency,” he said.

“We are looking at expanding the market. Therefore, we are not focusing at this market alone, we are looking at exports. But the contribution of exports to our overall performance is still low.

“Therefore, we have said what is standing in our way to get back to where we were, where exports were contributing 30 percent of revenue,” he said.
His remarks come as Cairns has been able to exponentially increase production from an all time low of 5 percent and prejudicial management level of 20 percent, to an average of 40 percent.

Cairns was placed under judicial management in September 2012 due to serious financial constraints, but has made huge strides since then to attain profitability as it awaits fresh equity capital injection.

The exponential growth, aided by the $1 million loan facility that Cairns got under the Distressed and Marginalised Areas Fund, saw the group growing its monthly revenue to about $2 million.

Mr Kwenda said that the company had benefited significantly from Government protection and notable improvement has been seen in the canned products, potato crisps and biscuits business units.

He said measures put by Government in terms of the tariff regime, despite the Sadc trade protocols, for revival and survival of industry, were also critical for growth of local farm produce suppliers.

This comes as import duty regime increase on certain products helped level the playing field as some cheap products of inferior quality were either being dumped in Zimbabwe or were grossly discounted to undercut local producers.

Against this background Mr Kwenda said there was need for increased action by Government to plug loopholes at the ports of entry to prevent the smuggling of grossly discounted imported products.

He said Cairns has benefited strongly from brand equity, good relationship with suppliers and good skills base.
The group produces a variety of goods broadly classified under chips, snacks, cereals, wines, fruits and vegetables.