Navigating Mergers and Acquisitions in Zimbabwe: Takura & Innscor are the big movers

Earlier this year we explored why Zimbabwe’s merger and acquisition activity was on a historic pace during the first half of 2023. This article is a follow up to that previous effort to further understand the historical trends that preceded that 6-month period. In order to do so, we went through competition and tariffs reports from 2013 onwards in a bid to map out trends in the local mergers and acquisitions space.

From 2013 through to 2022 we found annual reports for all years except for 2015 and 2019 which were not available. Still the 8 years of available data were enough of a sample size to determine some trends. Here’s what we established:

From 1999 until 2013 there were 253 cases an average of 17 cases annually. From 2013 to 2022 (excluding 2015 & 2019) there were over 137 deals completed in that same period - about 15 deals per year. From these we analysed about 126 deals that the CTC reported on.

Drivers for activity in Manufacturing?

There are a few hypotheses put forward for the activity in the manufacturing sector and fragmentation is one of them. Zimbabwe's manufacturing sector is characterized by numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This fragmentation limits individual players' access to resources, economies of scale, and market share. M&A deals offer a way to consolidate the market, creating larger entities with greater reach and efficiency.