Zimpapers Logo

Mr Msipa

Business Reporter
MANUFACTURERS will this year focus on initiatives to unlock manufacturing competitiveness and will interrogate issues including developing value chains for various sectors when they converge in Gweru for the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries annual conference.CZI president Mr Charles Msipa said this year’s conference will have a dual approach with one focusing on how companies can improve internal efficiencies and the development of value chains. The conference will be running under the theme: “Unlocking Manufacturing Competitiveness”.

“We are going to convene our annual congress in Gweru from July 29-31 and will be held at the Executive Lodge in Gweru. It will be a first to be hosted in the Midlands in Gweru seeing that the Midlands industrial sector has taken a hammering over the course of the last six or seven years,” said Mr Msipa.

“It’s going to be a dual approach; first approach is what companies/firms can do internally within their environments to improve their own efficiencies in order to improve their overall competitiveness.”

Mr Msipa said the conference will have some keynote speakers from the Lean Institute Africa from South Africa to talk about lean manufacturing which focuses on efficiency in manufacturing operations.

“We will also share some local experiences from local manufacturers from some value chain initiatives that have been taking place in some value chains such as edible oils and cotton and clothing value chains. We will share some of the lessons from the value chains that have taken place recently,” said Mr Msipa.

The value chain approach looks at the whole spectrum from raw materials right through to the finished product.

For instance, instead of just looking at what is happening in the issues relating to cooking oil, including the volume of imported cooking oil; the value chain for cooking oil would look at the production of soya beans, the conditions around the production of soya beans and cotton seed, the extraction of the oil, processing into the final product.