Tag: SupplyChain

Black Friday has become one of the biggest retail events on the South African calendar. What began as a single day of discounted shopping has evolved into weeks of deals. Retailers and e-tailers now promote offers across online and brick-and-mortar channels throughout Cyber Monday. Some even run ‘Black November’ campaigns.

South Africa loses nearly half (47.3%) of all municipal water supplied through leaks, infrastructure failures, and other non-revenue losses. Meanwhile, copper theft costs the economy an estimated R45 billion a year. Road maintenance backlogs also exceed R197 billion. These problems reflect the increasingly interconnected nature of South Africa’s infrastructure systems. Consequently, disruptions to electricity or water supplies, road deterioration and stormwater drainage failures can quickly escalate.

Businesses claiming diesel refunds may be inclined to view the South African Revenue Service’s (SARS) new diesel refund registration system as little more than an administrative change. However, the reforms signal a far more fundamental shift.

Every litre of fuel consumed on South Africa’s roads reflects the underlying health of the country’s logistics economy. Changes in fuel prices have a far-reaching effect on the country’s supply chain, transport systems and the wider logistics industry. They also affect the pricing of goods on store shelves.

Fiscal pressure and rising scrutiny are reshaping procurement into a value-driven discipline. Global public procurement spending is estimated to account for around 12% of GDP in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies. This underscores the scale and strategic importance of how governments and organisations spend money.

What we wear every day is the result of a global supply chain that few people ever see. That chain often begins far earlier than most realise and increasingly raises questions about the materials used to make our clothes. In many cases, it starts - believe it or not - in a forest plantation. Not in an abstract sense, but quite literally. Wood grown in South African forest plantations is processed into dissolving wood pulp. Producers export that pulp, and manufacturers convert it into fibre elsewhere. They eventually turn that fibre into fabric

The Public Procurement Act 28 of 2024 is signed but not yet in force. However, the Constitutional Court is yet to rule on a challenge by the Western Cape Government, the City of Cape Town and amaBhungane. They argue that Parliament failed to facilitate reasonable public participation on material amendments, as required by section 59(1)(a) of the Constitution. That judgment is still pending.

Cyber risk is no longer a peripheral IT issue in African supply chains. Instead, it is becoming a core operational threat. According to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), 70% of organisations report experiencing fraud or economic crime. Cyber-enabled fraud ranks among the fastest-growing categories globally, according to the ACCA Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey.

Most mining losses do not come from commodity prices. Instead, they come from operational friction that compounds across every shift. Mining companies can tell you exactly what they spend on diesel, explosives or labour. They can quantify the cost of downtime, track commodity price fluctuations by the hour and model production scenarios years into the future.

Across Africa’s food and feed processing sectors, sustainability is increasingly moving to the centre of operational decision-making. Importantly, this shift is not being driven by environmental commitments alone. Instead, many businesses are driving it through more immediate priorities. These priorities include operational efficiency, profitability, resilience and long-term competitiveness.