ROBOCON designs, builds and maintains automation for Zimbabwe's farms and agri-processors. Locally engineered, locally supported, and priced well below imported machinery — so productivity goes up without a foreign-currency wall in the way.
Sample operations across Mashonaland, the Midlands & Manicaland
Zimbabwean operators can already buy robots. What they cannot buy is a technician who arrives this week, a spare that ships from Harare instead of Shanghai, and a panel built on the assumption that the power will go out. That gap is the whole company.
Systems are designed for Zimbabwean farms from the first drawing — dust, heat, an unreliable grid and the crops you actually grow.
A local team and a local spares holding turn a two-month import wait into a same-week fix, which is usually the difference between a delay and a lost crop.
One blended monthly figure replaces the large up-front hard-currency outlay that keeps automation out of reach for most SME operators.
We do not chase mining or general manufacturing contracts. Everything we build goes back into knowing farm automation better than anyone else in the country.
Typical experience for a small to medium Zimbabwean operator. Illustrative comparison.
| Criterion | ROBOCON | ABB / Fanuc / KUKA via SA integrators | South African integrators | Imported Chinese machinery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technician on site | Same or next working day | Flown in — 2 to 6 weeks | Cross-border trip — 1 to 3 weeks | Remote email support only |
| Common spare parts | Held in stock in Harare | Ordered from Europe or Japan | Ordered from Johannesburg | Shipped from origin — 8 to 14 weeks |
| Up-front foreign currency | None — one blended monthly fee | Large USD capital outlay | Large ZAR / USD capital outlay | Full prepayment before shipping |
| Built for an unstable grid | Standard on every panel | Assumes a stable supply | Assumes a stable supply | Assumes a stable supply |
| Operator training | On site, in your team's language | English manuals, training off site | Training off site in South Africa | Translated manual in the crate |
| Designed around farm workflows | Purpose-built for agribusiness | Generic factory templates | Adapted from mining and FMCG | Generic, one-size-fits-all |
We deliberately do not sell into mining or general manufacturing. Every system below exists because a Zimbabwean grower or processor asked for it.
Soil probes, zone valves and pump starters under one controller, so water goes on when the profile needs it rather than when someone remembers to open the line.
Moisture-controlled dryer sequencing with automatic auger and elevator interlocks — protecting the batch when power or airflow drops mid-cycle.
Camera-based grading lines for horticulture that hold a consistent pack spec through the whole shift, without adding people to the belt.
Automated vents, fogging and fertigation tuned to the crop recipe, keeping tunnels inside their window through Zimbabwe's hot dry season.
A pick-and-place arm that stacks crates and bags to a repeatable pattern, taking the heaviest, most injury-prone task off your packhouse floor.
Every panel we build assumes the grid will fail. Controllers hold state through an outage and bring your sequence back up in a safe order.
One day on site · free
An engineer walks the operation with you, measures what the bottleneck actually costs per season, and says plainly whether automation pays for itself here.
Within 10 working days
You get a schematic, a scope and a fixed monthly figure — including support — before anyone touches a spanner. No open-ended commissioning bills.
6 to 8 weeks
Panels are built in our Harare workshop, installed around your season, and run alongside your existing process until the numbers hold up.
For as long as you run it
Quarterly service, spares, unlimited fault callouts, remote monitoring and refresher training — all inside the same monthly figure.
Instead of a large foreign-currency purchase followed by surprise service invoices, you pay a blended monthly amount covering the amortised system and the local support contract that keeps it alive.
$850/ month per system
Blended rate — amortised installation plus the recurring local support and maintenance contract. Invoiced in USD or ZWG.
Custom
For groups running three or more systems across sites. Everything in the standard contract, plus a named engineer, priority spares allocation and a quarterly optimisation review across the whole fleet.
Talk to usWe grow at the speed our support can follow. Every new region gets technicians and a spares holding before we sign the farms — because a system nobody can service is worse than no system at all.
8systems deployed
Live installations across irrigation, grain handling and packhouse lines, each on a full support contract.
24systems targeted
Expanding through Mashonaland and the Midlands with a second field-service team and a larger Harare spares holding.
60systems targeted
National coverage with regional technicians, so no supported farm sits more than a day away from a callout.
Year 2 and Year 3 figures are growth targets, not results.
“The imported line we quoted first would have taken four months and every dollar of forex we had. ROBOCON retrofitted the dryer we already owned and had it running before the harvest.”
“What sold us was the callout terms. When a sensor failed on a Saturday, someone was at the mill on Monday morning with the part in hand — not quoting us a flight from Johannesburg.”
“They trained our packhouse team on our own floor, in Shona, with a one-page guide taped to the panel. Six months in, my supervisors handle the day-to-day themselves.”
Still unsure whether automation makes sense on your operation? Put your details in and we'll walk it through with you — no obligation.
Book a farm auditAlmost never. Most of our work is retrofit: we instrument the pumps, dryers, conveyors and irrigation lines you already run, then add the control layer on top. Replacing a working machine is the most expensive way to automate, so we only recommend it when the existing kit is genuinely at end of life.
Every ROBOCON controller is designed around an unstable grid. Controllers run on a small battery-backed supply, hold their state through an outage, and restart your sequence safely in the correct order when power returns — instead of dumping a half-dried batch of grain or leaving a valve open.
Support is the product, not an afterthought. Our target is same or next working day on site across Mashonaland, and within 48 hours anywhere else in Zimbabwe. Common spares are held in Harare, so you are not waiting weeks on a Durban customs queue for a €40 sensor.
One blended figure covers the amortised cost of the installed system plus the ongoing support contract: quarterly preventative service, consumable spares, unlimited fault callouts, remote monitoring, firmware updates and operator refresher training. There is no separate service invoice at the end of the season.
No. Removing the large up-front foreign-currency outlay is the entire point of the model. You commission the system, it starts working, and you pay a predictable monthly amount — invoiced in USD or ZWG — for as long as you keep it under contract.
Often yes, but not always, and we will tell you when it is not. The free farm audit produces an honest payback estimate for your specific operation. If the numbers don't work at your scale, we would rather say so than sell you a system that sits idle in a shed.
We do, on your site, in the language your team works in. Every deployment includes hands-on operator training and a laminated one-page runbook at the panel. Refresher sessions are included in the support contract at no extra cost.
We take on a limited number of new deployments each quarter so every system keeps the support it was sold with. Tell us what you run and we'll come and look.
