• New CEO Sharon Kodzanai takes over as Tanganda shifts deeper from tea into macadamia and avocado exports.
• FY2025 saw revenue fall and losses widen, driven by weak volumes, weather shocks, and depressed global nut prices.
• Next five years hinge on orchard maturity, processing scale-up, stronger pricing realisation, and tighter capital discipline.

Harare – Tanganda Tea Company is changing CEOs at a point when its investment story is being rewritten less by tea, and more by the economics of trees that take years to mature.

The board has appointed Sharon Nyasha Kodzanai as Chief Executive Officer with effect from 12 January 2026, following the resignation of Timothy James Graham Fennell, who steps down from the CEO role on 31 March 2026 after 15 years in the position. Tanganda says Fennell will remain for a three-month handover to support the transition.

Kodzanai is not an external “turnaround hire” in the traditional sense. The notice positions her as a long-serving executive who has held senior roles across finance and administration, and served as Company Secretary since 2022, with earlier experience in hospitality and agri-business. That background makes her appointment a continuity signal, but it does not reduce the scale of the task on her desk.

Over the past five years, Tanganda’s trajectory has increasingly been defined by diversification into export horticulture, particularly macadamia and avocado, alongside tea and beverages. Annual reports repeatedly frame the group as having built the “largest hectarage” in Zimbabwe across macadamia and avocado, and strategy commentary has leaned into value addition and export market diversification as a hedge against price swings and climate risk. 

That pivot is visible in capital allocation. The company has invested in processing infrastructure aimed at capturing more value per tonne, rather than remaining a raw commodity supplier exposed to spot prices. Tanganda’s own disclosures and updates point to a macadamia processing and pack shed build-out, and broader emphasis on processing capacity as the orchards mature.

Macadamia, however, is a long game and it only becomes compelling at scale. Tanganda’s 2023 reporting pegs macadamia plantation area at about 894 hectares, and the strategic logic is straightforward: as tree age profiles improve, volumes and recovery rates should rise, allowing the firm to dilute fixed costs and justify processing investments.

The tension is that the same long-cycle crop that underpins the “future” narrative has also been a source of volatility in the present. In FY2025, Tanganda’s performance was hit by a mix of late rains, heat stress and lower agricultural volumes, while management commentary also flagged depressed international prices as part of the revenue drag. The group’s USD results for the year to 30 September 2025 show revenue down 26% to US$19.18 million and a swing to a loss after tax of about US$4.2 million, from a profit the prior year.

Operational detail matters here because it explains why “value shift” is not the same as “risk reduction”. Tanganda’s FY2025 disclosures show weaker crop outcomes across segments, including macadamia and avocado, and these swings are amplified by global pricing cycles. In its 2025 reporting, the company attributes the difficult year to weather impacts and macro pressures, with lower production volumes feeding into weaker profitability. 

The market has not been blind to these pressures. Tanganda’s share price has been trading around ZiG 0.65 to 0.66 in mid-January 2026, with the ZSE price sheet also reflecting 71 cents pricing references depending on quoting conventions and reporting format. Relative to the early post-listing levels reported around 2022, the stock has struggled to build a sustained re-rating as earnings have become more weather and price-sensitive. 

Yet, the “depressed pricing” story cuts both ways. Low nut prices punish growers selling raw nut-in-shell, but they also strengthen the argument for processing, grading, and market access that can lift realised prices and smooth cashflows. Tanganda’s stated direction towards processing is therefore less about following a trend, and more about defending margins in a commodity that has become structurally cyclical. 

This is where Kodzanai’s near-term agenda becomes clear. First, she inherits a business that must prove its diversification is investable, which means stabilising production through irrigation and agronomy discipline, while building the commercial muscle to sell higher-value outputs into reliable channels. Second, she must manage the balance sheet through a period where cash generation is pressured by climate shocks and capex needs, a tension Tanganda itself acknowledged when it moved to raise capital and reinforce funding capacity. 

Third, she has to reframe Tanganda’s identity without losing the base. Tea remains core to volumes and brand presence, but the growth narrative increasingly sits with macadamia and avocado as export earners. The challenge is execution timing: orchards mature slowly, prices move quickly, and investors get impatient when the bridge years deliver losses. The CEO’s job is to shorten that impatience gap with measurable milestones, higher recovery rates, better cost control, and clearer evidence that processing and market diversification translate into better realised pricing. 

Tanganda is not guaranteed a “top producer” status by intention alone, but the ingredients are visible in its estate footprint, processing investments and the scale implied by its macadamia hectarage. What will determine whether it becomes a regional macadamia heavyweight is the hard combination of agronomy consistency, processing throughput, export execution and capital discipline. The new CEO steps in when that proof is no longer optional, and the market will price Tanganda on delivery, not direction.

- Equity Axis News