Star 2023-02-27

NAMPAK, South Africa’s biggest packaging group which is facing financial difficulties, had planned to retrench at least 213 employees, but will only lay off 20 following trade union negotiations. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) said on Friday that it had concluded a retrenchment agreement with Nampak Packaging after the group served the union with a section 189 notice and its intention to retrench at least 213 employees. ”Following extensive engagements with the employer, Numsa has managed to reduce the number of involuntary retrenchments from 213 to 20,” the union said in a statement. At its last year-end, Nampak employed 4 314 employees across 33 manufacturing operations. The previous year it employed 4 252 staff. Numsa said Nampak would also pay the retrenched employees a…

The FATF has added the country owing to concerns about SA’s capacity to fight financial crime SOUTH Africa felt the ramifications of being grey-listed immediately as stocks and the rand ended the week in turmoil after the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international financial crime watchdog, added the country to its grey list owing to concerns about its capacity to fight financial crime. The rand weakened 0.21% and plunged to R18.49 against the US dollar from its open on Friday of R18.24/$1, the lowest since early November last year, as investors worried about the country’s prospects of getting off the grey list. Stocks also tumbled to a seven-week low as the JSE All Share index lost 2.6% to 76 938 points on Friday, pushing the index’s losses…

ESKOM is trying to isolate farming communities from residential ones in scheduling load shedding to allow for irrigation and food production as the spectre of threat on food security looms large, the ministerial task team comprising of think tanks, agricultural organisations and the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (Dalrrd) told Parliament on Friday. The task team, chaired by Dalrrd director-general Mooketsa Ramasodi, has a short-term game plan to allow for the reconfiguration of the power network to allow for the isolation of farms to enable adequate supply of power to stave off the interruptions with minimal load curtailment. The task team will review the schedule or time to allow farmers to irrigate at critical times like evenings and early morning, allow municipali- ties to do their own…

SOUTH Africans should brace for prolonged, and perhaps even severe power cuts, from this week as Eskom has warned of “some risks” lying ahead. This follows a “very difficult week” in which Eskom shed and curtailed a combined more than 7 000MW for two consecutive nights during evening peak hours to protect the national grid from collapsing. By Sunday stage 6 load shedding was reduced to stage 4, a welcome reprieve and despite the power utility on Friday saying that stage 6 load shedding would be implemented continuously until further notice due to the breakdowns of a number of generation units. Eskom’s head of generation, Thomas Conradie, said on Friday that the ongoing high levels of unplanned breakdowns had posed a serious risk of pushing load shedding to stage…

MARKETS on Friday welcomed Spur Corporation’s sizzling results and bountiful dividend to shareholders, and as it said it was “cautiously optimistic about trading for the remainder of the financial year”. Its shares rose 2.13% to R24. Spur’s results have been on an upward trend after Covid-19 national shutdowns wrecked its revenue and the local restaurant sector was bought to its knees. In its results for the six months ended December 31, 2022, the group which owns Spur, Pana- rottis, John Dory’s, and RocoMamas brands, said on Friday that its profit grew by a whopping 182.9% year-on-year to R117.1 million. Revenue increased by 35% to R1.5 billion as group profit before tax more than doubled to R168m. Headline earnings rose by a massive 191% to R112m with the group…

STEINHOFF International’s shares surged by almost 17% on Friday after the owner of Mattress Firm, Pepco Group, and Pepkor Holdings reported that for the three months ended December 31, 2022, its revenue increased 14%, boosted by a growing store base in Europe. The shares later closed Friday 13.33% at 34c. The shares have decreased by 87.85% in the past six months. In its trading update released on Friday, the debt-riddled group said revenue grew by 14% to €3.2 billion (R62bn) in the first quarter, driven by a 22% rise in the revenue from pan-European discount retailer Pepco, which accounted for about half of its total revenue. The Pepco group, which owns the Pepco and Dealz brands in Europe and the Poundland brand in the UK, increased revenue despite trading conditions…