Paramount Garments Successfully Exhibit At Both ZAS & Prior 7th SADC Summit Despite US$30m Inferno Loss

Despite clothing manufacturer, Paramount Garment Works being incinerated by a blazing fire in early December last year, the firm incurring damages amounting to US$30 million, the company showed resilience and exhibited at both this years SADC industrialisation summit as well as the ongoing 114th Zimbabwe Agricultural Show adding to their scooping the first runner up position in the export category of the manufacturing industry.

Zimbabwe’s second best exporter accounting for 60% of the country’s forex in the manufacturing sector was not dampaned to continue producing by the fire incident that occurred at its Harare factory located in the industrial area of Southerton, which came two weeks after the company had celebrated its 75th anniversary and experienced a 20% growth in its business.

The company’s insurers are currently reviewing the damage to ascertain the cause of the fire which still stands unclear at a snail pace.

Speaking exclusively to TechnoMag, the Paramount group finance director Jeremy Youmans said that the company had suffered a significant loss.

“The total cost is still being fully calculated, the conservative estimates at this stage will go over US$30 million,” he said.

Due to water shortages in the capital and other reasons the fire took 10 days to take down forcing the company to purchase water to put out the fire as the fire brigade ran out.

“It was a very good working relationship, but as we have said in previous briefings, they are severely constrained and under-resourced to carry out a fire of this size,” Youmans said.

“That is an issue I think other bodies need to take up and deal with to prevent further disasters like this not being dealt with in a much more contained way.”

The company said it was working with the insurers to get the money that would help them to kick-start the repairs needed for the factory.

“We were fully insured and paid up. Now, we need the service provider to deliver. Obviously, there is a process we must go through, we all understand that, and some of that process is very difficult. But our number one priority has been to protect the jobs of the two-and-a-half thousand people we employ here and in Bulawayo. That is our number one priority,” Youmans said.

“From there, we are then moving through the process, but we do believe that more could have been done to advance money out of what was an inevitable claim anyway. But we will deal with that. It’s just a matter of trying to match A to B, what we call the big jigsaw puzzle, and we hope to achieve that by reaching out to everybody else we can.”

He said the insurance company had visited the factory twice to assess the damage caused and how much they would have to cover.

“We’ve been in regular contact as we’ve tried to get the process going on getting the claim going. They are backed by a big group of reinsurers, and those reinsurers have not attended the site here or given us any offer of support,”

“What our brokers have done, is to immediately attend what can be done and try and help the process.