THE Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF) has built a trading centre for its members to supply food produce which will be sold to chain stores on a wholesale basis. ZCF director operations and projects Derrick Sokoni said the trading centre was located at the Olympic Development Centre (OYDC). In an interview with the Sun in Lusaka, Mr Sokoni said its members through cooperatives would have a ready market for their produce. “This will be like their drop off zones produce to add value and supply to super markets. The chain store will be buying from wholesale prices. There will be nothing like spoiling, “Those products which require freezing will be in a separate storage facility. Farmers have to be in cooperatives for them to access the ZCF trading centre,” he said. Mr Sokoni said the Centre would have storage facilities with special temperatures for all the produce supplied to it. The storage facilities, he said, would have coolers which would regulate the desired temperatures for the produce. “If for instance we have an order from Shoprite, and they want one tone of tomatoes, we have a lot of individual cooperatives who can come with the 20 kgs each to build one tone,
“We have put in place storage facilities which can store fruits and vegetables at temperatures at which they will be fresh for a number of days. We have special cold rooms which have been done, with big ones at OYDC,” Mr Sokoni said.
