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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
LIVETOUCH Investments, a new cement manufacturing company based in Redcliff, has failed to pay about $10 million to suppliers in China and Mauritius for equipment used to build its 410 000 tonnes per annum plant due to foreign currency shortages. Managing director Dongning Wang said the group had resorted to its Chinese shareholders, Golden Earth Group, to service obligations resulting from the $36 million worth of equipment used to build the Redcliff cement plant.

“We were supposed to start paying at least six months after shipments, but now it has been 13 to 14 months and still we have not been able to pay. The suppliers are in Mauritius. Fortunately, we got group credit support, they said Zimbabwe will become a big investment and so will be able to repay once the situation improves,” Mr Wang said.

The plant, which currently employs about 130 people, has started production and is expected to reach 50 percent of its current capacity by the beginning of next year. The plant can be expanded to 700 000t a year capacity and employ over 200 people, over five shifts, if operating at capacity.

Mr Wang said after successful stress testing, the company was now focusing on marketing for product visibility and building brand trust of its Diamond Cement, which he said some of the quality and strength of any cement product in Zimbabwe. This, Mr Wang said, was due to finesse of the plant’s ball mills, which are bigger and only comparable to PPC Zimbabwe’s recently completed new Harare cement making plant. While marketing and promotion is the firm’s next major focus, Livetouch is already supplying to 15 cities and towns in Zimbabwe.

However, the company said another big challenge affecting its operations is the shortage of limestone needed for clinker production, a key material used in cement manufacturing, which the Redcliff based company has had to buy from competitors. Livetouch is the fourth cement producing company in Zimbabwe after forerunners PPC Zimbabwe, Lafarge and Sino-Zimbabwe. PPC Zimbabwe, which was already producing from Bulawayo and Gwanda, doubled its production capacity to 1,4 million tonnes after recently commissioning a new plant in Harare.

Lafarge has a 450 000t plant in Harare while Sino-Zimbabwe’s plant in Gweru can produce about 250 000t per year. Livetouch’s Redcliff plant, sited adjacently near Steelmakers to the north and a few kilometres diagonally opposite mothballed Zisco to North West, has brought a refreshing feel to the deathly silence and faltering industrial face of Redcliff. Zimbabwe currently consumes about 1,14 tonnes of cement per year.