AGRO-PROCESSING company, United Refineries Limited (URL), is struggling to keep up with demand for its newly introduced product — vegetable juices, chief executive officer, Busisa Moyo has said.

BY MTHANDAZO NYONI

Recently, the Bulawayo cooking oil manufacturer, launched vegetable juice products in four flavours — pure carrot, carrot infused with ginger, carrot with pineapple and pure beetroot.

Moyo told NewsDay in an interview that the products were doing well on the market and they were failing to keep up with demand.

“We have already introduced some new products; we want to introduce some more. We have been saying in the market we want to introduce more nutrition to our customers. We see ourselves as a company that is shifting our focus from just mass market to nutrition, bringing health to Zimbabweans, not just food.

Moyo said the volumes on the newly introduced products were picking up. “Some of them are in the first month, some of them are in the third month. We are seeing a lot of movement on the juices,”he said.

“There is a lot of excitement about the vegetable juices, not fruit juices, vegetable juices, 100% no sugar-added and very healthy. We are seeing that taking off very well. There is a lot of excitement on the market and we are actually struggling to keep up with demand.

“They have taken off much than we thought. The others are little bit slower (especially) on the mealie-meal, its little bit slower but we are remodelling it.”

URL is one of the largest Bulawayo-based cooking oil manufacturers.

During its inception in 1935, the company was called United Chemical and Soap and was only into manufacturing soap, cooking oil and cosmetics.

The company has grown over the years, expanding its product portfolio to mayonnaise and stock-feeds, focusing on servicing local, regional as well as international markets.

- Newsday