Leading beer and soft drinks manufacturer, Delta Beverages is set to ration beer supply to licensed retailers through the introduction of a pre-order system to guard against hoarding and panic buying.
The past month has seen local retail shops running out of soft drinks, mineral water and beer due to ‘increase in demand.’
In an interview with 263Chat, the group secretary Alex Makamure blamed citizens for panic buying, saying the situation will soon normalize.
“Our beer production has been at the highest in the last three months, whilst we appreciate the demand that is coming through, there is an element of panic buying but it will normalize on the beer side.
“People are hoarding from the retail shops to go and sale out side at inflated prices and that is the nature for Zimbabweans.
“They are doing what they can to try and rationalize, from our side we are not even limiting the orders of our traders but some traders are buying seven to eight which will is not normal,” said Makamure.
Asked on whether they are going to meet the festive season demand, Makamure said they had not devised a clear supply plan but hinted at selling to licensed operators only.
“People used to buy about ninety crates per person and now they are buying more than four hundred so our question is where are they going with that beer.
“What we are trying to do now is trying to go into the pre order system whereby we will only sell beer to licensed operators so one needs to phone input your order and you will be allocated time to come and collect your order so that we take out people who just sit on our premises who are not proper traders.
“With respect to soft drinks, we were running for the part of October so we began to run last week and we don’t have a clear supply plan for December,” he said.
Makamure added that “We believe that we are still selling for value in US dollars, our prices are bench marked to regional quality and as long as we have a perception that we are selling in correct US dollars value, there is no reason why we should increase our prices.
“If there is an official devaluation, we will take up our prices based on what happens to our inputs.”
