Star 2024-04-19

THE CONSTITUTIONAL Court’s ruling in favour of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) to retrench 400 employees has made a precedence-setting judgment, giving merged entities some leeway to lay off workers post merger proceedings. This comes after the Concourt on Wednesday handed down judgment in an application for leave to appeal against the order and judgment of the Competition Appeal Court which had ruled against CCBA. CCBA had been taken to task by the Competition Commission for retrenching the nearly 400 employees, allegedly in breach of merger conditions. This as the Competition Tribunal in 2016 approved the merger of four bottling firms in South Africa into CCBA, subject to conditions such as maintenance of a certain number of employees for a certain period as well as a prohibition of certain retrenchments. However,…

SOUTH African Airways (SAA) has confirmed its plans to return to some of the intercontinental routes it has not served since it went into business rescue. The troubled State-owned carrier yesterday dismissed claims from industry players that a special effort was being made to reserve these routes against bilateral partners interested in more frequencies to take the slack. SAA has thus far resumed services to São Paulo, Brazil, from Johannesburg and Cape Town, and will next Sunday restart services to Perth, Australia. “The airline does have plans to return to some of the intercontinental routes we served in the past, however, this growth will be in a phased and prudent manner to ensure the sustainability of the airline,” SAA spokesperson Vimla Maistry said yesterday. “The designation of airlines on routes…

SIBANYE-Stillwater, which has been retrenching employees across its South African gold and platinum group metals (PGMs) operations in the past few months, is shutting down the 4 Belt PGM shaft at Marikana in the North West province. The closure comes five years after the initial proposed closure in 2019, with several successful initiatives supported by stronger PGM prices, enabling the shaft to remain open to mine the last remaining economically extractable reserves. Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman yesterday said the company has determined that the 4B shaft’s lack of viability will tip its other operations into loss-making. “Despite 4B shaft having limited remaining economic reserves, the decision to close a shaft is never taken lightly,” Froneman said. We cannot, however, continue to absorb ongoing losses, which in turn affects the viability…

THE JSE HAS proposed to amend its listing requirements for a market segmentation project on the Main Board of the bourse that will make it easier for smaller companies to raise capital and lower the compliance cost burden. The exchange currently has a two-tiered equities market, the Main Board and AltX. The plan is to segment the Main Board into the Prime Segment and General Segment. The JSE has seen a flood of delistings in recent years, and apart from mergers and acquisitions, many of the smaller companies have cited the rising costs of JSE listing compliance requirements and the difficulty in raising capital as reasons for exiting the market. Smalltalkdaily Research investment analyst Anthony Clark said the JSE “must be applauded” for the “leap in the right direction” that…

POOR CONSUMERS are in for a tough time as the cost of a household food basket increased nearly 9% in the year to March in spite of slowing consumer headline inflation, according to the Food Basket Price Monthly Report April 2024. The National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC) yesterday said the 28-item urban food basket rose by 1% to R1 269.62 in March compared to R1 257.23 in February. However, this represented a year-on-year increase of 8.6%. The report is a comparative analysis of expenses associated with selected food items in both urban and rural areas, and reveals variations in prices for certain products when purchased in urban versus rural regions. It showed that urban consumers allocated more of their budget towards Ceylon/black tea, which exhibited the most substantial…

KENYA will host an Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa (Apra) Investment Forum in Nairobi in September to foster a conducive policy environment for energy development and facilitate investment. This was announced yesterday at the14th Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) . Apra, which was founded at the Africa Climate Summit in September 2023 by Kenya, Ethiopia, Namibia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe, with support from Denmark, Germany, the UAE and Irena, aims to accelerate energy transitions in respective countries. Davis Chirchir, the cabinet secretary in charge of Energy and Petroleum in Kenya, spoke about why Apra was important to Africa and called it “an agent of change”. This as all countries, including Apra, need to triple renewable capacity by…