Company seeks Govt intervention

A LEADING engineering company headquartered in Bulawayo, Botton Armature Winding has appealed to Government to stop companies from sending electric motors outside the country for servicing because the work can be done locally.

The engineering company, which at its peak employed over 100 workers, now employs about 45 people as it is operating between 45 and 50 percent capacity.

The firm’s managing director Mr Kenworth Tauzen told Industry and Commerce Deputy Minister Chiratidzo Mabuwa during her recent tour of city companies that the local market had also been flooded by cheap imported electric motors.

This, he said, impacted negatively on local companies that are supposed to produce for the market.

“Big mining companies and other large corporates are sending their motors to South Africa for repairs and servicing yet we have the capacity to do the job,” said Mr Tauzen.

Botton Armature Winding, which was established in 1968 and has branches in Harare and Bulawayo is Zimbabwe’s only firm with a coil manufacturing shop.

The company manufactures resin-rich and VPI wound motors of up to 11 kilovolts.

Mr Tauzen told Deputy Minister Mabuwa that his organisation had the capacity to meet local demand for its products and services.

The company also has a rewind plant for both AC and DC motors, armatures pluguer pumps and generators.

It offers mechanical repairs such as redesign, alignment, testing of the automotive units.

In an interview with Business Chronicle, Mr Tauzen said:“Technology is on the move everyday but we are so blessed in that we have been looking at our competitors, our market and the trend within our industry.

“I think we are actually technologically compliant because if you go through the rigorous test processes that we subject our units or our customers’ assets to, you will find that it is the same test protocol that is exactly done elsewhere by organisations that are also ISO compliant.”

Last year Government in a bid to control imports and protect local manufacturing companies, promulgated Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016, which removed several goods from the Open General Import Licence. — @okazunga.