Poultry and eggs producer, Irvine’s says it has grown its egg production capacity to produce 4,8 million eggs per week, nine percent up from last year’s 4,4 million as the company moves to maintain its market share in egg production.

Irvine’s indicated that the growth was attributable to significant investment in the segment over the past year and aims to produce up to six million eggs per week in the short period to come.

In an interview on the sidelines of the International Egg Day held on Friday at Derbyshire Primary School in Waterfalls, Irvine’s commercial director Anele Zunga, attributed the growth in production to fund allocation towards infrastructure development at the company.

“On a weekly basis, we are now producing over 4,8 million eggs due to the substantial investment we poured into the rearing and layer houses over the year, in this period last year we were producing 4,4 million but we have improved, our focus is on increasing production capacity in the next 18 months to six million eggs per week,” said Zunga.

As a gesture to honour the day, Irvine’s celebrated World Egg Day with a donation of 6 000 eggs to Derbyshire Primary school in Waterfalls. While handing over the gift Zunga said: “As the leading fully integrated poultry producer in Zimbabwe, our mandate is to change lives in Zimbabwe and Africa at large by producing affordable protein. Days like World Egg Day remind us of our mission and vision, and we shall do whatever we can, to make eggs available to the populace.”

“As the adage goes, charity begins at home. To mark the 25th anniversary of World Egg Day, we are giving away more than 6 000 eggs to children and staff members at Derbyshire Primary school. Eggs are an essential nutrient provider for children.”

In the past years, the company has celebrated the day with children’s care centres, old people’s homes, and other needy members of the society, but this year, because of the pandemic, the company saw it fit to celebrate in their own vicinity.

The annual event that honours the highly nutritious and brilliantly versatile egg, highlighting the vast range of unique benefits it brings to people of all ages was established in Vienna, Austria, in 1996, when stakeholders decided to celebrate the power of the egg. World Egg Day is a global event celebrated on the second Friday of October every year and the day was set aside to honour the unique contribution eggs make to supporting people around the world.

Owing to their broad range of nutrients, eggs are a healthy, nutritious and affordable part of the diet for people at all stages of life, including growing teenagers, pregnant and lactating women, the elderly, and infants, particularly those in nutritionally vulnerable areas.