Star 2022-12-12

UNPRECEDENTED load shedding and rapidly deteriorating water infrastructure have made it difficult for business to operate in South Africa, says Astral chairperson Theuns Eloff, accusing the government of failing to provide basic services to meet the needs of its people. “It is difficult to remain positive and it is widely acknowledged that drastic political change is needed,” the CEO of South Africa’s biggest integrated poultry producer, Chris Schutte, said in the latest annual report. Astral processes some 5.8 million broilers a week, has eight feed mills, does poultry production at 178 sites and employs 12 417 people. Eloff said the outlook for the coming financial year “is less positive with the financial health of the consumer set to deteriorate further, and raw material costs and other variable costs such as…

Crisis crippling economic growth a major source of investor concern STRUGGLING South African consumers have been warned to brace for even more intense load shedding next year as Eskom moves ahead with its six-months outage at Koeberg nuclear power station while scrambling for money to buy diesel. This will cripple economic growth and is a major source of investor concern. This comes as Eskom last week ramped up load shedding to stage 6 for the first time in three months due to a plethora of unplanned breakdowns at its ageing coal-fired power stations. By the weekend, the power utility eased load shedding to stage 4 and stage 2 as it had 5 901MW on planned maintenance while another 15 394MW of capacity was unavailable due to breakdowns. Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi…

MINING giant Kumba Iron Ore said on Friday that while the iron ore export channel had reopened, ongoing operational challenges had resulted in lower throughput than expected. In its full-year guidance update, Kumba, majority-owned by Anglo American, lowered its production guidance for 2022, 2023, and 2024, citing poor freight rail performance. Parastatal Transnet has been plagued by poor performance due to a lack of trains, cable theft, and poor maintenance, which has made it unable to meet demand. According to Kumba, it now expects to produce 37 million tons of iron ore this year, which has decreased from previous guidance of between 38 million and 40 million tons. Kumba CEO Mpumi Zikalala said: “Following a tough first half operationally, production and sales were disrupted in October 2022 by the two-week…

THE TOTAL number of Zimbabweans – both in and outside the country – remitting money to friends and relatives has dropped although remittance values from expats is on the increase. This comes at a time local, regional and international economies are facing turbulence amid fears of a global economic recession. Zimbabwe has a total population of 15 million, according to a 2022 census by Zimstats. New data from the Finscope study by Finmark and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe shows that the total number Zimbabweans not remitting money to friends and relatives has widened, from 42% in 2014 to 62% this year. “Remittances have dropped over the years from 58% of adults remitting in 2014 to 38% in 2022,” said the 2022 Finscope Consumer Survey Report Zimbabwe launched by the…

Premier Fishing and Brands’ (PFB’s) minority shareholders are being offered R1.60 a share in terms of a scheme by major shareholder African Equity Empowerment Investments (AEEI) prior to a proposed delisting of PFB. The offer represents a substantial premium to the share price of 99 cents on Friday. The offer is also a 23% premium to the R1.30 that the share was trading at on November 9, when AEEI first announced it was considering making an offer to buy the shares in PFB not held by AEEI and shareholders acting in concert with AEEI. AEEI owns 146.2 million out of the 260m issued shares in PFB, or 56.23% of the shares in issue. Minority shareholders hold 6.14%, while Sekunjalo Investment Holdings and asset management firm 3Laws Capital South Africa respectively…

On Tuesday this week, an application from Ilitha was heard in the Western Cape High Court, in which Ilitha applied to place the Sunrise Energy Group into business rescue. BOTH the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) have invested in the Sunrise Energy LPG project, located in Saldanha Bay. This project was executed on the back of receiving a concession from the Transnet National Ports Authority. The project’s aim was to build the infrastructure needed by liquefied petroleum gas importers to supply LPG to the market. The shareholding of Sunrise Energy is made up as follows: – 1. Ilitha Group Holdings Proprietary (Ilitha): 9%. – 2. IDC: 31%. – 3. Mining, Oil and Gas Services (MOGS): 60%. The Mogs shareholding is made up as follows: a.…