MILLERS LOSE BUSINESS

MILLERS have lost business because of the decline in demand for mealie meal on the domestic market, Millers Association of Zambia (MAZ) president Andrew Chintala has said.

Speaking to The Scoop, Mr. Chintala said millers were going through a tough time businesswise as sales for the commodity had dwindled to record low levels but said the development was expected at this time of the year as there was a general reduction in the consumption for the commodity. 

He said the decline in the demand for the commodity was normal as this kind of trend was expected by the millers.

“This is normal during such a period. We expect this kind of trend because one would have expected that some of the consumers would have produced some maize for their own consumption which they take to small hammer mills to grind and make their own mealie meal. Commercially produced mealie meal really tend to have a very huge challenge in terms of sales as before,” Mr. Chintala said.

He said the current consumption for mealie meal in the country sat around 120, 000 metric tonnes per month which was equivalent to about 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum.

“For human consumption, the country’s maize consumption is around 120, 000 metric tonnes and if we add other maize consumptions such as commercial use for commodities such as stock feed and what goes into brewing companies, the country requires about 150, 000 metric tons of maize per month,” he said.

He added that despite the current challenges the sector was facing, there were huge opportunities in the production of mealie meal in Zambia.

“There are huge opportunities in the production of mealie meal for someone who would like to venture in this sector aside from a few challenges here and there. Currently, the country has a total installed capacity in terms of mealie meal of 4.7 million metric tons and one only requires about 1.5 million metric tons per annum meaning there is about 3.2 million metric tons of unutilized capacity in terms of milling.

“For those that may want to venture into this business, one needs to be centrally located because in other provinces it is a different case. The milling space has huge opportunities and we would only encourage them to firstly do a proper market study and also decide where to take the investment especially in places where we do not have milling companies.

“This is because what usually happens is that we move maize from the high production areas into places where the milling companies are set up. The milling companies in Zambia are actually saturated. For instance, in Lusaka we have too many milling companies and that makes competition quite huge for Lusaka based millers,” he said.