Speaking in the corner of SMEs, Glytime CEO, Lesley Marange advocated for SMEs like his business during ZimTrade’s Exporters’ Conference held yesterday. As one of the panelists, he spoke with the aim to improve export conditions for their produce and services.
According to their website,
“Glytime Foods Pvt is a Manufacturing Company in the Food industry that produces Health products We are a leading Brand in the Food industry driven with customer preferences locally and Internationaly.”
During the discussion on “exporting in COVID times” at the conference, Marange mentioned that the company entered the industry in 2018 and has grown since then. Their products are now being exported and are becoming quite popular. After three years of operation, Glytime has its stake in the regional market and this was intentional.
“It was a strategic decision to say we want to be a born global business. When we initiated the business, we were clear about what we wanted to do. We wanted to build a brand that resonates not just in the local market but that has got a huge footprint even in the regional market.” Marange said.
He went on to say that the agriculture base does not support raw material demands of the manufacturing sector currently to enable sustainability across the value chain. Efforts are being made to rectify this and SMEs rely on imports of some of their raw materials especially from South Africa.
The company takes some of the Macadamia nuts from Chipinge and Chimanimani to add value to them and export
He acknowledged the efforts done by the government of introducing the SME auction system which they use to get the foreign currency to import the raw materials they can’t get locally.
As their brand is a health and wellness brand, they are managing to sail through during the pandemic. They are focusing on producing food that promotes health and wellness, making this more acceptable in the market. Health and wellness is a social value on the global map and this value increased significantly since the beginning of COVID-19 and this is good for business as they found their niche market.
Post harvest loss experienced by farmers, case in point at Mbare musika, is of concern to Marange and he said that he is keen to reduce it. His vision is to reduce imports of finished products that can be locally manufactured. Glytime manufactures oats, granola cereals, oaties cookies and honey.
Glytime this year won a gold medal at ZITF and they have a bronze medal they received when they were in Zambia with ZimTrade. This shows that the CEO of Glytime is here to win, grow and be a household name, not only locally. Marange identifies himself as a ZimTrade baby and described the trade development and promotion organization as hands-on.
