Press Corporation sells off PTC

Malawi’s largest conglomerate, Press Corporation Limited has sold one of its famous franchise, the flagship food store and supermarket, Peoples Trading Centre commonly known as PTC to a South African-based Malawian owned company, Tafika Holdings Limited.

The company that has bought PTC, which in the last few years became known as ‘Peoples’ chain stores is owned by a Malawian business mogul, Arson Malola.

The move comes as for years the franchise has been struggling to raise capital for smooth running of its operations, which led to closure of many of its stores.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Peoples, Ferdinand Mchacha has confirmed in an interview with Nyasa Times that Tafika Holdings Limited has acquired 100 percent stakes of the shares in PTC from Press Corporation Limited.

According to Mchacha, the move is aimed at recapitalizing PTC and restore it to its former glory as well as expanding its operations in the country and beyond the region.

Said Mchacha: “As a company we have been struggling with capital inadequacy for the past eight years due to some serious capital losses that came about due to a number of factors including stock losses, shrinkage among others.

“Over the years there were so many of initiatives happening for partial recapitalization but we felt time had come that we needed to make a big capital injection through this recapitalization process.”

However, the new PTC owners have dispelled fears of retrenchment and job losses for existing employees, saying the company will be expanding from 20 existing stores to about 200 in the next five years, hence the need to create more job opportunities.

“We are looking at expanding, so we are actually looking at employing more people and not reducing the existing number.

“Currently we got only about 20 Stores in Blantyre, Lilongwe, and Zomba, we are looking at opening stores in Mzuzu and all over the country. We have had taken all this and everything else into consideration and his whole recapitalization was done to save people’s jobs.” Mchacha said.

Furthermore, Mchacha said that Peoples Trading Center will not be rebranding to change its name and will maintain its other franchise of SPAR as well as Food Lovers stores.

PTC will be carrying out recapitalization process for five years starting with restocking the stores, capacity building for its stuff as well as upgrading some of its stores apart from opening new stores across the country and within the region.