East African Business Week

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA - The Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) will launch its packaging technology centre in July this year to help local manufacturers to export their commodities to foreign markets.
TBS Director General, Charles Ekelege is confident that the centre will help local industries to access and boost and their external markets which have not been impressive at all. Ekelege blamed poor packaging of Tanzania-made products as the major cause for failed access to foreign markets, which hinders manufacturers from success in their industrial developments.
Speaking to the East African Business Week in Dar es Salaam last week, the TBS boss noted that most manufacturers have so far improved the quality of their products, but are yet to make similar improvements on packaging improvements.
 Ekelege said lack of knowledge on proper packaging for export has denied manufacturers of valuable income from exports and the Government is denied revenue from exporting industries.  TBS is thus moving to support manufacturers by launching a packaging technology centre (PTC) due to start operations in July this year.
 The centre was established by the Government of Tanzania in collaboration with the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and UNIDO.
 The PTC had earlier been planned to start early this year, but had to extend to July 2011 due to lack of equipment, he said, adding that, "We need laboratory equipment which will enable us to test the standard of packaging materials," he said.
 According to the TBS boss, the standards bureau has already technical trained staff to run the centre which is situated within the TBS premises in Dar es Salaam. The packaging services will test packages and packaging materials to ensure quality.