Trade Kings Group
About Trade Kings
Trade Kings Group is one of the largest privately owned manufacturers in Southern Africa. Featuring world class manufacturing facilities in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Trade Kings has proudly been manufacturing and exporting the highest quality Zambian made products within Zambia, southern Africa and beyond.
Since 1995, now celebrating 25 years of high quality, trusted and affordable products, our portfolio has grown dramatically and the group has diversified extensively. Today, Trade Kings is a globally competitive group of businesses driven by global standards, manufacturing practices and an aggressive research and development agenda which has led to the high levels of innovation, constant improvement and a host of highly specialized, technically advanced products in recent years.
The scope of Trade Kings Group today includes four distinct clusters namely; food, beverage, laundry, home and personal care products and steel. The product range manufactured under each category is listed below:
- Food: Confectionery, biscuits, baking powder, custard powder, castor sugar, soya fillets, spice mixes, breakfast cereals, infant cereals, potato crisps and maize snacks.
- Beverage: Maheu, Chibwantu, milkshakes, instant coffee and tea beverages, carbonated soft drinks, energy drinks, juices, milk and dairy juice blends.
- Laundry, Home and Personal Care Products: Detergent (powder and paste), bleaches, floor cleaners, toilet cleaners, dishwashing liquids, all purpose creams, scouring powders, window and glass cleaners, bath soaps, hygiene soaps, beauty soaps, hair soaps, glycerine, hand sanitisers, liquid handwashing soaps, antiseptic liquids and fabric conditioners.
- Steel: Steel re-bar, angles and channels.
The drive for diversification and a belief in the establishment of specialised businesses, to ensure focus and innovation within each category, has led to the Trade Kings Group we know today. Trade Kings Group is comprised of Trade Kings, Big Tree Beverages, Big Tree Brands (featuring several specialist sub businesses focusing independently on infant nutrition, cereals and baking products and spices), Dairy Gold, Swiss Bake, Yoyo Foods and Universal Mining and Chemicals Limited (UMCIL).
Since our first product, Blue Boom Detergent Paste and the establishment of the now iconic BOOM brand, Trade Kings has developed a portfolio of many of the foremost brands in the Zambian and southern African markets across the categories and sectors in which we operate.
Thanks to the support of the Zambian people and those in all ten of the southern African countries in which we operate, Trade Kings and its brands have become household names and are synonymous with quality, reliability and value for money across the portfolio and the group of companies.
At Trade Kings, we aim to create a connection between our products and their impact on people’s lives. From the promotion of affordable hygiene with Yebo Carbolic soaps, the health benefits of MediHerb Ayurvedic herbal soaps and the antibacterial family protection of Hygienix hygiene soap, to the livelihoods that selling our confectionary lines like Amazon and Milkit creates. Our role in the lives of others is never taken for granted and inspires our business approach, culture and way of thinking.
Trade Kings purpose is “Improving Lives”, whether through our emphasis on providing branded products of superior quality and value, value addition and shared value projects with local suppliers, growers or producers, our corporate social responsibility initiatives and public private partnerships through the Trade Kings Foundation or our focus on women’s and youth empowerment initiatives. All our efforts are aligned to deliver this single minded promise. Both evident in our history and the actions of our founders we aim to improve the lives of our consumers nationally, regionally and internationally both now and for future generations through carefully selected strategic projects.
Find out more about who we are, the Trade Kings growth story or how we are working to build a better future.
News
Trade Kings Group Awarded For Contribution To Sustainable Development
The award was received by Group General Manager Mr. Lux Subramaniam alongside Group PR and Corporate Manager Bridget Kambobe.
Group PR and Corporate Manager Bridget Kambobe said 'I feel delighted and honoured by this very auspicious occasion to express gratitude on behalf of the Trade Kings Group for the first sustainability award from the Zambia Association of Manufacturers.”
We are greatly humbled by this recognition. The Trade Kings Group of companies wishes to thank the Zambia Association of Manufacturers (ZAM) for recognizing our contribution towards sustainability.
Through this award as first recipient of this award that has been launched by ZAM this occasion is greatly important for us as a business.
We are fully aware of the importance of sustainable development for Trade Kings Group, it’s all about a strong, healthy and just society. This means meeting the diverse needs of all people in existing and future communities, promoting social wellbeing, social cohesion and inclusion and creating equal opportunity.
For the year 2018-2019 our corporate social responsibility has invested through various sectors in excess of 500,000 USD.
We have over the last 24 years through our co-business manufactured products that have contributed to the wellbeing of the people, in main categories of detergents, soaps, food and beverages.
Our passion is beyond merely providing innovative products to our customers. We have envisioned improving lives, by this we mean our business strives to contribute to the health and wellbeing of the people.
May I hasten to say that we have set priority towards the pillar of health in our corporate social responsibility for very clear reasons, our co-business provides solutions for masses in the areas of sanitation and hygiene, which is directly related to health and wellbeing of people.
We believe as a business that better health is central to human happiness and wellbeing also makes an important contribution to economic progress as healthy populations live longer and are productive.
Trade Kings Group has provided employment opportunities to now close to 6000 Zambians and continues to grow the numbers as the business expands into the Lusaka South multi facility economic zone with respect to the provision of employment opportunities, industrialization that not only contributes to the development of infrastructure and man power, but also improves the living conditions of the residents in the communities.
The group has created the Trade Kings Foundation with full recognition of the role that the Zambian people have played in the growth of the business foundation is medium to reciprocate to the Zambian people by giving back to society through charitable ventures and to work through various strategic partnerships for the benefit of greater good.
Trade Kings Foundation focuses on the areas of health education women empowerment and youth development, contributing to the achievement of sustainable development.
In conclusion we are greatly humbled at this award as we continue to focus on being a true partner of development with government.
We commend the efforts by the Zambia Association of Manufacturers to contribute to the growth of the manufacturing sector as a major contributor to economic transformation.'
Trade Kings Group Supports Grass Root Womens Empowerment And Entrepreneurial Development
The program dubbed Ring of Quality which has targeted to engage 1,000 women by the end of the year 2019 has envisioned enhancing the business quality for women particularly in confectionery businesses commonly known as Tumbuwa. This initiative is driven by the TUMBWI Baking Powder brand, a locally manufactured product by Big Tree Brands.
Trade Kings Group Manager for Public Relations and Corporate Affairs, Bridget Kambobe was in Kafue this morning to launch the project through the Kafue Women Association. The Ring of Quality as an initiative focuses on building capacity of women entrepreneurs and the related development of food safety skills. Through this project the women are educated on the importance of Food Hygiene, Nutrition and business skills considered key pillars to grow their businesses.
As a company we have undoubtedly identified women entrepreneurs as the rising stars of our economy. For that reason, our Womens Empowerment program is dubbed SHE-ECONOMY as we believe women have ability and power to contribute significantly to the growth of the Zambian economy. While women entrepreneurs are a vital and vibrant source of economic growth, as a business we are cognizant of the challenges that are uniquely faced by women which include sluggish business growth.
The Ring of Quality has been rolled out in Lusaka, with over 500 women enrolled to date. This has seen the transformation of the Tumbuwa Business in numerous compounds including Kanyama, Chawama and Kamanga in Chelston areas of Lusaka. We have prioritized Kafue to contribute to improving the livelihood of the people and are committed to the ongoing support of women owned businesses.
Trade Kings Among Top 10 Most Admired African Brands
Trade Kings was the only Zambian brand to make the Top 10 Most Admired Brands.
Trade Kings has appeared in the Top 10 Most Admired Brands for the second year running having gained 10 ranking points that comfortably puts the Zambian conglomerate in the Top 10 Most Admired African Brands and second only to Dangote in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) category.
The key attributes taken into account include innovation in view of Trade Kings’ huge investments in modern machinery and technology, the quality of products and quality of management.
For a company like Trade Kings which is 25 years old, it is no mean achievement to find themselves among the top 50 most admired brands in Africa competing with the likes of international megabrands that include Nike, Apple and Samsung while ranking in the top 10 with African giants like Dangote, MTN, Anbessa Shoes, Econet, Safaricom, Shoprite, Glo and Tusker.
Trade Kings Zambia is an indigenous African company that has been in existence since 1995 and has grown into a conglomerate; a group of companies namely Big Tree Beverages, Dairy Gold, Swiss Bake, Yoyo Foods, Royal Oak and Universal Mining and Chemical Industries Limited (Kafue Steel).
From humble beginnings, the company has grown into a colossus that has spread across the southern African region. With a vast product range extending from confectionary and detergents to beverages and dairy products, Trade Kings Group is not content in its growth and looks to continue “Improving Lives” through innovative products that are of the highest quality, affordable and available to the vast majority of low income households in Zambia and across Africa.
Trade Kings Group General Manager Mr. Lux Subramaniam in an interview added, “We are proud to be a Zambian and African company that is locally grown to contribute and provide solutions for Zambia and the region as a whole. All thanks go to the people of Zambia and Africa as a whole for putting us where we are today”.