Leading poultry producer, Irvine’s Zimbabwe has opened the newly renovated state-of-the-art Farm Fresh Shop located along New Chitungwiza road in Waterfalls, Harare as the company continues to expand its market share and improve customer experience.
The walk-in facility boasts of latest technological equipment and a selection of Irvine’s Products – Farm Fresh Chickens, Sausages and Eggs among other products.
“We renovated an existing shop, improving customer service just making it a self-service shop. We currently have two shops, this one and the day old chicks’ shops,” Irvine’s Commercial Director, Anele Zunga told 263Chat Business.
The one stop shop is segmented into retail and wholesale departments to cater for the diverse customers’ needs.
“Customers can expect quality service, spacious parking space and more till payment points, all for their shopping convenience. The services were designed in response to customer’s calls to cater for both retail and wholesale customers,” he said.
Before the opening of the one stop shop, Irvine’s was running a kiosk at the farm, but a surge in demand for Irvine’s products saw the kiosk being overwhelmed by surging demand for poultry products
He said the development comes at a time business is beginning to improve following the COVID-19-induced hard lockdowns which affected economic activity and disposable incomes for its customers.
“Since the lockdown was eased we realize that business is starting to recover again and volumes are improving. We have been managing quiet well,” said Zunga.
However, the company is still facing challenges to access adequate foreign currency to meet its operations, despite having accessed some from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)’s foreign currency auction.
“It’s a bit difficult but if you look at the auction system we have managed to get some funds which we have channeled towards our capital projects but we are still a long way in terms of accessing funds for working capital purposes,”
“You find that it’s a biggest challenge at the moment because we have to import a lot of our raw materials but also if you look at the fact that the farming was better so we won’t be importing stuff like maize and so on so the import pressure is low now,” said Zunga.
