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Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
Gweru-based cement manufacturing company Sino-Zimbabwe Cement Company is planning to set up an industrial park and has applied for 1 600 hectares of land to fully implement the project. Speaking during the tour of the brick-manufacturing plant commissioned on Monday, Sino-Cement managing director Mr Wang Yong said plans were afoot to set up an industrial park.

Mr Yong said the cement company is set to expand and increase its production capacity as well as following the whole chain of production from mining to distribution. He said the company, however, required an additional 1 600ha to fully implement the project.

“We want to construct a Sino-Zimbabwe Industrial Park. We want to use the current foundations that we have, which is Sino-Zimbabwe Cement Company.

“We are following the cement process line from the quarry to the end.
“This means from quarry, cement, brick and to the tile or even logistics. We will use this building material as a foundation to this industrial park.

“At the moment, we were utilising 247 hectares at the cement manufacturing plant. We want to fully utilise the land and, that is what we would start with. We want to apply for Indiva Farm.

“The total land would be 1 661 hectares to build our Sino-Zimbabwe Industrial Park,” he said.
Mr Yong said the commissioned brick-manufacturing plant had world standards and environmentally sustainable methods of acquiring raw materials.

“We use shell for the manufacturing of the bricks coming from the mining site. Most brick factories in Zimbabwe use clay from agricultural land. Then we have the application of the latest technology in the manufacturing of bricks.

“This is the latest technology which is being used in the world in the manufacturing of bricks which has minimal manual holding from the feeding of the raw material to the finished product,” he said.

Mr Yong said the brick-manufacturing plant will contribute towards the reduction of the country’s import bill as it produces face bricks that are being imported from South Africa.

“Our product is of high quality. Through the modern process line, we able to produce high quality products that include commercial, standard, industrial and face bricks. Those bricks will meet the domestic demand of face bricks that are currently being imported and it will also reduce the country’s import bill and preserve foreign currency,” he said.

The Chinese investor injected US$ 60 million into the Sino-Zimbabwe Cement project since its inception. The company has a production capacity of 300 000 tonnes of cement annually. It has a staff complement of 400 people.