Navidale Textiles to knit its way into Zambia

11 Aug, 2019 - 00:08 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Business Reporter

Navidale Textiles, is not a name easily recognisable in Zimbabwe, but the knitwear manufacturing company is big enough that it plans to “knit” its way into the Zambian market.

Navidale Textiles (Navidale) is one of the 24 Zimbabwean companies that were exhibiting at the Zambia Agriculture and Commercial Show (ZACS) last week and is hoping the appearance will be a stepping stone into penetrating the Zambian market.

Navidale was established in 1995 with the objective of supplying quality corporate and school jerseys among other products. It employees 40 people and has the capacity to produce 600 jerseys per day achieving about 10,000 units per month.

It counts among its customers, Enbee, the Zimbabwe National Army as well as the Zimbabwe Republic Police.

Navidale’s sales and marketing consultant Shingai Gorejena told Business Weekly on the side lines of ZACS that the company was exhibiting for the first time at the agric show and the response was impressive.

“Customers are pleased, in fact they don’t believe our products are coming from Zimbabwe but overseas.

“It has been very exciting to learn of this market and engage with different types of corporates. We are hopeful that we will be able to tap into this market,” said Gorejena.

She said Navidale was hoping it will be able to partner different wholesalers and distributors so that the company can also set up a base in Zambia.

“Expanding into Zambia is a very exciting opportunity as the market seem to believe in Zimbabwean products. The reason we do this is to ensure that we deliver quality products to the people and those people are not limited to Zimbabwe only.”

Gorejena said Navidale has already been exporting to some school in South Africa. In Zimbabwe she said the business is fairly good in spite of the challenges bedevilling the economy such as shortage of foreign currency and electricity.

“Availability of capital is one of our main challenges as we do get our raw materials mainly from India and South Africa.”

The company imports yarn from India and knitting machines from German and Italy. Fabric is also imported from South Africa.

“So our main challenge is availability of funds, being able to get foreign currency so that we can purchase raw materials so that our products are readily available for our customers,” said Gorejena.

She, however, said customers are very pleased with the company’s products.

 

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