Spar Zimbabwe held a press conference on Friday morning in Harare. The press conference was meant to clarify the reports by Reuters that Spar group was pulling out of the Zimbabwean market. Reuters quoted SPAR Group CEO Graham O’Connor who said “The economy was just too tough…payment issues, infrastructure issues, so it was better that we exited”. Addressing members of the media, Terence Yeatman, Managing Director of SPAR Zimbabwe said
“SPAR is here to stay, we’re not going anywhere…we’re strong and you’ll continue to see more stores being opened in the future.”
Mr Yeatman clarified that SPAR Group, a South African company, had indeed pulled out of the Zimbabwean market. The SPAR Distribution Centre was owned by Innscor as the majority shareholder and SPAR Group as a minority shareholder. The SPAR Group left the Zimbabwean market in December 2015 when the distribution centre was closed. Innscor then sold the 6 corporate SPAR stores they owned to an independent retailer called Yellowcob Enterprises.
Shamiso Pfumayaramba, SPAR Zimbabwe’s Marketing and PR manager, said the main function of the distribution centre was to offer retailers products on credit. Since it was closed in 2015, retailers have had to make their own agreements with suppliers. She also went on to say they were looking to revive the distribution centre in 2017.
“We are saying to our retailers, we are here to stay. We are here to serve our community…”, she said. Mr Tinashe Mangisi, an independent retailer who owns SPAR Gokwe and SPAR Mufakose. Our trading hasn’t changed. The move that has happened between SPAR South Africa and SPAR Zimbabwe, nothing has changed. We are still trading, we are still strong and business goes on as usual.”
SPAR Zimbabwe is now importing about 50% of its products from South Africa with the remaining half being produced locally. SPAR being a community based chain of stores is encouraging local suppliers to supply their stores in a bid to empower the communities that house the SPAR stores. As an example, Mr Mangisi said, in Gokwe, they currently provide farmers with potato seeds. The farmers grow the produce and bring them in store and they are sold by the supermarket.
There are 31 SPAR stores in Zimbabwe, 21 of which are owned by independent retailers and 10 by SPAR Retail division (Yellowcob). The independently owned stores are all trading under licence from the Guild of SPAR Grocers of Zimbabwe. SPAR Zimbabwe aims to help independent retailers with support services ranging from technical, specialist and product points of view.
Asked to comment on whether there was a price increase in products across SPAR stores, Mr Yeatman said
“There has been slight price increases from suppliers over the past 2-3 months and this is due to the cost of a particular supplier making payments to a supplier across the border.”
In relation to facing difficulty with making foreign payments, he went on to say,
“We, fortunately, have been okay as SPAR, we’ve got good relations with our banks and with the Reserve Bank Governor but we deal with over 300 suppliers and yes, some of them are experiencing difficulty.”
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