BITC facilitates German expertise for Tom Milling

The Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) is currently hosting a Senior Experten Services (SES) consultant from Germany to provide consultancy services to Tom Milling, a grains production company based in Mochudi.

As part of the Botswana Exporter Development Programme (BEDP), BITC continues to identify and avail opportunities to empower local companies to increase capacity and eventually conquer global markets, something Tom Milling through the consultancy is exploring.

Incepted 30 years ago, Tom

Milling is a producer of sorghum and millet meals for the local market.

The company currently sells its products through Game

Stores, Sefalana, Shoppers,

Square Mart, Spar, Trade

World, Eureka, Trans Cash and

Carry, as well as Jumbo Cash and Carry.

The company, which employs

33 people, also supplies to most parts of the country. BITC Executive Director, Trunklinah

Gabonthone said

SES senior expert, Klaus-Peter Pekartschik is currently working with Tom Milling doing diagnostics to eventually implement interventions to optimise the company’s grain produc- tion processes and increase capacity, production, and competitiveness of their produce.

She said through the SES intervention, Tom Milling will optimise its grain production

and benefit from skills transfer and production staff training thus increasing the company’s productivity and enhancing its competitiveness in the market.

“Pekartschik has been working with the production team and has identified a few areas for improvement with possible interventions already being considered.

These include more in-depth testing and screening of raw material and the output, as well as general improvement of the production process to improve and optimise production,” she said.

To benefit from this programme, companies need to be enrolled in the BEDP and express through an SES application form detailing areas of support so

that SES selects the most suitable expert for the business.

She said as part of the implementation of the BEDP, companies are subjected to due process of diagnostic assessment to gauge their level of export readiness and come up with tailor-made interventions and this exercise is one of those

interventions.