AGRICULTURAL concern Valley Seeds says it is fully prepared for the 2025-2026 farming season “by ensuring that 60 percent of all seed required for various programmes has been sourced”.
This comes as the Temba Nkatazo owned company has started investing in a 6 000-plus extra storage facility at its main Juru Growth Point plant and it is positioning itself to take full advantage of government’s sunflower production policy or initiative by expanding its own business.
“We are fully prepared for the 2025- 2026 agricultural season and to meet customer or farmer demands in our quest to continue contributing to Zimbabwe’s agro-based economic development,” Aluis Chareka, Valley Seeds managing director, said before paying “special tribute to various stakeholders, including the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture, Finance and others for supporting our operations”.
“Apart from our efforts to ensure food security in the country, we have embarked on a number of initiatives to augment our production capacities by commissioning a new and state-of-the-art traditional grains plant as well as ramping up sunflower production,” he said, adding the group had to also “boost its logistics side and act in such a proactive way or step as it was anticipating a five-figure production level or tonnage in two years”.
With the company being the proud owner and distributor of internationally-acclaimed brands, Valley is also redoubling its efforts to grow its product offering-footprint and reduce its 90 percent dependency on maize seed production by escalating its diversification into other hybrid products and other grain varieties such as its Zambezi, and Limpopo wheat range and cotton output.
Apart from anchoring such programmes as the presidential input scheme and others, the company also sells seed, herbicides and other agro products directly to the market.
“Valley Seeds is not only working to strengthen and maximise its industrial value chain by expanding or diversifying into the oil processing, and stock feed manufacturing sectors, but increase its cowpeas, groundnuts, soya and sugar bean as well as vegetable seed production, among other commodities, and actual crop production or hectarages from across the country,” Chareka said.
On the other hand, group commercial director Tich Mapongah said: “We are also focusing on increasing the production of vegetable seeds to support Zimbabwe’s horticultural trajectory. “We are proud of our innovation and a robust delivery network, which ensures that we support farmers with top-quality products all the time.
‘With over 30 years of experience in collaborating with farmers and other stakeholders such as our diligent genetic testing, certification partners in South Africa and business associates in the world, Valley Seeds has developed a deep understanding of the market, including the country’s climate and supply chain needs,” he said.
As it is, the company is already at the tail end of its maize harvesting and grain uplifting process from farmers, and months or way ahead of the planting season, which validates or attest the locally-owned group’s high-quality approach to business and service delivery, Mapongah emphasised.
Owned by Zimbabwean tycoon Nkatazo, the multi-million dollar Valley Seeds enterprise — which encompasses Southern Cotton and ginneries in Glendale, Shamva and the Midlands — has over 600 employees.