Potato shortages hit Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has been hit by an acute shortage of potatoes which is threatening to collapse potato crisps making firms.

"Importing the key ingredient from South Africa is the only solution," Hanawa Super Foods managing director, Simbarashe Zhou said.

"At 80%, which is a realistic achievement, we are looking at producing about 500kgs an hour, which is 9 600 and 10 000kgs of finished product per day because we are supposed to be doing two shifts of 10 hours each.

"But, due to shortages of raw materials, we are only just running a day shift," he said.

"Due to the above normal rainfall that we had, our potato farming shifted people to start planting potatoes beginning of March, so what was in the country was completely exhausted. There are no potatoes currently in the country."