Mutton Cloth Manufacturing Case Study: Madzibaba Nzira

The marginal utility from importing second hand vehicles from Japan should be waning. This is what we have been doing for the past 2 decades and clearly there is nothing new to tickle our fancy. Perhaps the hybrid cars such as the popular new Honda Fit?

So what is likely to shape the future of business in Zimbabwe?

Welcome to enabling others to make money and today we tackle the manufacturing sector. Most of the machinery and equipment imported from China and in some instances—Taiwan, Thailand and India.

Our ZBIN Manufacturer of the year is Obey Nziramasanga, a mupositori who shares tonnes of information especially developments on the streets. Last year he did extremely well in soap and other detergents manufacturing. His portfolio also included hair oils and floor polishes.

This year he added mutton cloth manufacturing and the results have been amazing!

The mutton cloths used in mostly vehicles cleaning and bought by vendors who buy in bulk and selling at a huge profit. This is clearly a B2E (Business to Entrepreneur model). Did it take long to establish in the market?

Not at all as B2E has instant results—vendors have been queuing up on his door and now he cannot cope with supplies! His business secret is he kept in contact with his street value chain contacts.

Yes in Zim there is a huge street value chain which is not too visible but big pushers of products on Harare Streets. Those bringing new products such as biscuits, hats, mutton cloths and more do not create new supply lines. They simply link up with secret groups of these pushers and the results are often instant.

The street pushers include newspaper vendors and pirate music vendors. You cannot be a serious business person in Zimbabwe who ignores this informal value chain.

So you don’t necessarily need to copy and paste mutton cloth manufacturing but can also look at other manufacturing equipment such as;

Biscuits production: The newest foreign products in Harare are biscuits imported from Lesotho, Maseru. Previously biscuits were imported from Zambia and Durban, but Lesotho has taken over. So research more on this area, set up own biscuits manufacturing plant and get the streets busy.

Watertank and hosepipe manufacture: In Zim this market is now saturated but there is room across the region such as Malawi and Angola. Namibia introduced this business in 2019 showing that it was a late entry. Carry out own researches and venture into SADC. This sector also includes irrigation equipment parts manufacturing.

Hybrid Cars Convertor: The 4IR is already upon us and if you are in doubt, read the E-Passport story published widely yesterday. Hybrid cars fast filling up our roads and streets although it’s a long way before we have a significant population. With the future anchored on tech, question is what will happen to gas powered vehicles in Africa?

Discard them? Not feasible but in some countries such as China, vehicles are being turned into battery powered versions. You bring your petrol vehicle; the engine is pulled out and replaced by a battery powered engine system. With millions of cars around—what opportunities do you see?

The list of what you can venture into manufacturing wise is obviously long but this festive season we encourage you to spend more time on Alibaba.com and study machinery catalogues.