Another CEO joins the chorus of warnings for South Africa
CEOs in the retail and agriculture industries have raised concerns over load shedding, which could lead to less food on store shelves across the country.
The latest warnings has come from Gareth Ackerman, the chairman of major retailer Pick n Pay, as well as the group’s CEO, Pieter Boone.
During his delivery of the company’s 2023 financial results, Ackerman said that the entire food industry is under threat due to load shedding.
Possible food shortages may be on the horizon, which could lead to cases of social unrest and possible store closures – if rolling blackouts increase further in intensity and severity.
Ackerman said that retailers in South Africa have been hit particularly hard by power cuts, especially when it comes to keeping goods fresh.
Pick n Pay said that it had to fork out R522 million on diesel to run generators for the year ended 26 February 2023.
He added that not all businesses can keep up with such costs – impacting investments in the local food industry and affecting food security.
“I feel compelled to caution that the entire food industry is under existential threat,” the chairman said.
Ackerman added that retailers are unable to continuously absorb the costs of mitigating power outages and that, at some point, consumers will end up footing the bill through much higher prices.
The company’s CEO, Pieter Boone, told Moneyweb that its stores were starting to see a shortage of basic essentials such as potatoes, paper, maize meal and long-life milk.
Pick n Pay is not alone in raising red flags for food security. The agricultural sector that provides goods to the stores has also expressed serious concerns.
Christo van der Rheede, the CEO of AgriSA, said that there had been a tangible loss of certain food items in stores across the country, and the situation is expected to worsen.
Van der Rheede said that the short-lived national state of disaster for the electricity crisis had allowed the government to exempt certain products from load shedding to protect the supply chain, but nothing was done.
“After implementing regulations that recognised food production and food storage facilities as essential infrastructure, the government failed to issue the directives authorised by the regulations to, for example, grant exemptions from load shedding or reduced load shedding schedules for essential infrastructure,” the CEO said.
As far back as February, the CEO of one of the largest private employers for meat processing Beefmaster Group, Roelie van Reenen, said that critical infrastructure that upholds the agricultural industry had collapsed due to load shedding.
“The system was under strain before, but with load shedding, it has simmered over into a full-blown crisis, and we are seeing how it is threatening our nation’s food security,” Van Reenen said.
Read: South Africans got this wrong about Eskom and load shedding
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