CFI Holdings Limited

Specialised Activities

Its Specialized segment provides stock feeds milling, maize and flour milling, snack foods production, and down packing of rice, salt, matemba, etc.; property management and development; and financial services.

Divisions

Retail Division

Farm & City Centre

Farm & City operates the Group’s hardware retail chain. Its main product lines comprise agro-industrial inputs, handy tools, building materials and general motor spares and accessories. Farm & City has 32 branches across the. The outlets operate mainly out of retail estate owned by the Group. It provides a distribution channel for suppliers of agro-industrial inputs, buildings materials and other hardware materials in the FMCG category. VETCO Vetco provides technical advice and assistance to all of the Crest Poultry Group’s operations. In addition, they provide poultry management technical support to the Group’s contract broiler growers and third parties. Vetco also retails veterinary drugs for poultry and livestock within the Farm & City hardware outlets.

Farming Division

Glenara Estates

Glenara Estates is a 2000 hectare farm some 18km to the North of Harare. It combines crop production (mainly maize, soya beans and horticultural products) with livestock and broiler production. Some of the poultry facilities are used for broiler parent breeders rearing and production to complement breeding operations undertaken by Hubbard Zimbabwe.

Suncrest Chickens

Suncrest Chickens, on the outskirts of Harare, houses the Crest Poultry Division’s abattoir which is responsible for processing slaughtered broilers from Glenara Estates and Crest Breeders into dressed chickens. The dressed chicken is distributed to the country’s leading retail outlets, hotels and fast food outlets in addition to some direct sales undertaken through Suncrest Chickens’ own shops.

Hubbard Zimbabwe

Hubbard Zimbabwe owns a 1 320 hectares broiler breeding farm in Beatrice approximately 60km to the south-west of Harare. Hubbard receives grand-parent breeding stock from France and rears these into parents and eventually sell off hatching eggs, broiler parents and day-old chicks into the local and regional market. The SBU has exclusive and non-exclusive rights to market the Hubbard poultry products into SADC and central and north African market. The operations have a capacity to hold 26 000 grandparent breeders and 302 000 parents

Crest Breeders

Broiler day old chicks produced at Hubbard are either sold to the third party market or placed on the 4 000 hectare Crest farm some 25 km to the South of Harare for broiler production. In addition, Crest also has a layer operation for table eggs production and undertakes maize and soya production which helps with meeting its feed requirements for the poultry operations. Mature broilers are then sent for processing at the abattoir at Suncrest Chickens. The operation has the capacity to hold approximately a million birds at any stage.

Milling Division

Victoria Foods

Victoria Foods owns and operates maize and flour milling plants in Harare and Gweru. They are also involved in the processing of snack foods and down-packing of household commodities like salt, rice, sugar beans, pasta, matemba, etc. The Company has the capacity to mill 3 000 tonnes of maize and 6 000 tonnes of wheat monthly

Agrifoods

Agrifoods manufactures a range of stock feed for cattle, poultry, ruminants and other specialized feeds, including those for breeder, layers’ and broilers’ operations. The SBU operates two plants, one in Harare and the other in Bulawayo. The installed capacity is 20 000 tonnes per month.

Agrimix

Agrimix primarily produces and supplies vitamin and mineral supplements for livestock to Agrifoods and third parties. Its popular product line includes ‘pre-mixes’ mainly sold to third partied who will then enhance third party feed by mixing these with cereal crushed feed on the farms.

Properties Division

• Maitlands

The Group owns a 45% equity stake in Mailands Zimbabwe. This property development company owns undeveloped high density stands to average 300 square metres. It previously sold almost 400 stands in Crest Township, just next to Glen View suburb. Beyond this, Maitlands offers real estate services encompassing property management, valuations, property development and sales & letting.

• Saturday Retreat Estate
• Reston Developers

Significant Events

Suspension from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange

CFI was suspended in January 2016 for failing to publish the audited financial results for the year 2015, which was lifted in May of the same year after it complied.

In January 2018 it was suspended again for three months to allow the company to comply with the following: compliance with free float requirements as per Section 4 paragraph 4,25 (d). The paragraph states that 30% of each class of equity shares shall be held by the public, unless otherwise agreed with the committee. Also where the issuer has had a private placement prior to the initial public offering, at least 20% of the total issued shares must be offered to the public, which generally consists of individuals and institutional investors holding less than 5% of the shares in issue. The company was also mandated to address governance related issues by the exchange relating to vacant board seats of the governance-related matters, appointment of a substantive board chairman, chief executive officer and finance officer and director, appointment of independent non-executive directors who are not affiliated or have any association with any of the company’s shareholders. The board appointed Itai Valerie Pasi as the acting board chairman and Shingirayi Norman Chibanguza as the acting group chief executive.^[1]

Judicial Management

CFI Holdings’, subsidiaries, Victoria Foods and Agrifoods were placed under provisional judicial management to allow for debt restructuring, re-organisation and recapitalisation of the entities. ^[2]

NSSA sells its shares

2017 NSSA was a major stake holder and disposed of its shares and these shares were acquired by Stalap which became a major shareholder ^[3]

Disputes between shareholders

Several disputes have arisen between Stalap Investmment and Messina Investment, the two major stakeholders who own 41% and 42% respectively in the group. These include, buying of minority shares ^[4], sale of Langford Estate in 2015 to Fidelity ^[5]. and issues of corporate governance ^[6].

References