09 March 2001

Maseru, Lesotho: Two senior employees from the renowned Kraft Foods Company of the United States of America will undertake a two-week mission to provide advisory services to the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC), aimed at revamping industrial activities in the mountain Kingdom.

This mission, beginning on 12 March 2001, is part of the pilot partnership initiative being experimented by the UN Volunteers (UNV) and the food industry giant, Kraft Foods, in selected countries of the developing world. Under its United Nations International Short-term Advisory Resources (UNISTAR), the UNV regularly assigns senior management executives and professionals to address specific problems in industry and public administration.

Under this partnership, Kraft Foods employees will be deployed to help revitalize flagging food processing industries. In Lesotho, the focus of this initiative will be to explore the possibility of diversifying the product/process range of the Basotho Fruit and Vegetable Cannery whose operations are currently hampered by inadequate supply of raw material due to seasonality of fruit and vegetable production. The Kraft Foods volunteers will explore and advise on the feasibility of diversifying into meat processing and determine an appropriate product mix for enhanced profitability and employment. The team will also aim to provide guidelines for stabilizing and expanding the raw material base of the Cannery to ensure full utilization of its installed capacity, regardless of product mix.

The Kraft Foods experts coming to Lesotho are John Weisgerber and Gary Skaar. Mr. Weisgerber is a specialist in Manufacturing Practices, Quality Programme Development and Facility and Equipment Design Requirements, and has been working for Kraft Foods for over 30 years, rising to the position of Associate Director at the Kraft Foods facility in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Mr. Skaar is an international meat processing specialist who has been working for Kraft Foods for about 28 years and is currently a Section Manager for Process and Product Development at the Oscar Mayer plant, also in Madison, Wisconsin.

In parallel to these efforts, the Government of Lesotho has been pursuing a privatization programme to unlock the enormous potential trapped by years of inappropriate policies and incentive structures in the industrial sector. In the run-up to the Kraft Foods mission, some attractive bids have been submitted for the Basotho Fruit and Vegetable Canners by private investors. It the expectation that the mission's findings will make a significant contribution to these efforts, the Privatization Unit of Lesotho's Ministry of Finance has been co-opted into the Task Force on the mission programme.