Raymond Dube, Managing Director of Nampak Liquid Cartons
There is no doubt that loadshedding is having a dramatic impact on businesses throughout South Africa. Earlier in the year, we saw The Sowetan publish on its front page the names of businesses that closed as a result of loadshedding. Others have reported losing between 30 and 50% of their productivity, while the South African Reserve Bank estimates that it’s costing the economy up to R899 million a day.
Despite this, we are seeing reports that the manufacturing industry remains resilient. Absa reported that its Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) was mostly unchanged from December to January at 53 points. It is metrics like these that seem to signal the commitment businesses have to staying open and adapting to the wide range of economic pressures. There is a certain type of resilience amongst business owners in South Africa that fosters innovation under the toughest of circumstances. In addition, with this comes the ability to remain agile. We see this in our own customers and are doing everything we can to ensure they have the support they need.
As a key supplier to many businesses locally and across the continent, Nampak Liquid Cartons understands these challenges and we are doing all that, we can to ensure that there are no delays in deliveries. To maintain this peace of mind among our clients, we are working closely with our landlord, Ithala Development Finance Corporation, to better manage our production at our Isithebe Plant. Ithala has successfully negotiated an alternative schedule to loadshedding with Eskom that meets the needs of managing the country’s power supply while still allowing the tenants in the industrial estate to operate.
With the load curtailment schedules updated regularly, we are able to rework shifts and daily tasks around when we have electricity. This enables us to engage with our social partner to communicate the request for load shedding as per the updated load curtailment schedule in a way that is not only feasible for the business but compliant in terms of meeting the industrial estate requirement to adhere to load curtailment schedules as requested by Eskom. By taking these additional measures at our Isithebe Plant, we do not foresee any disruptions to our operations due to loadshedding.
With this dependability in mind, we have approached our customers with the suggestion that they place bulk orders to ensure they always have the packaging stock on hand that they need. Thanks to their flat pack quality, liquid cartons can be delivered and stored in larger volumes. In fact, we are able to deliver 960 000 cartons in a single load with a lead-time of four weeks. This is just one of the many great reasons liquid cartons make for a high value packaging choice for the food and beverage industry, and allows our customers to plan and re-evaluate their production schedules accordingly.
The economic climate for businesses is tough and we hope this goes some way to alleviating this pressure on our customers at this time. While the country’s power supply is inconsistent, we aim to be the opposite and ensure we offer a dependable product and service so that there is one less thing to worry about.
