Capespan looks to Europe for new partner

3 Nov 2000 - By Staff reporter

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Deal to be finalised in a month, writes Ray Smuts

CAPESPAN is negotiating to sell a 50% stake in its four Southern African portside fruit terminals to an international operator - this after it failed to come up with a suitable local partner.
The R200 million deal, expected to be finalised within the next month, comes amid a period of massive restructuring within the R6 billion a year fruit marketing organisation.
Dr Dawie Ferreira, the organisation's logistics chief, told FTW that none of the more than 20 potential South African stakeholders had been able to come up with the sort of synergies sought.
We did not find the match we were looking for and are now talking to three large European companies, all involved in fruit logistics, with a view to one of them taking up the half-share.
In a new move, the four Southern African fruit terminals, Maputo Produce Terminal (MPT), Durban Export Terminal (DET), Port Elizabeth Export Terminal (PEET) and International Harbour Services (IHS) in Cape Town will be formed into a new company provisionally known as Fresh Produce Terminals (FPT), to be headed by a new managing director in the process of being recruited. (The shortlist is down to six)
The existing port managers, J C Strauss (Maputo), Hannes de Waal (Durban) and Lukas Gresse (Port Elizabeth) will remain while a new appointment is about to made at IHS in Cape Town.
Ferreira said Capespan was currently attempting to move from a function-orientated to a process-orientated company, part of which entailed the creation of four fruit business units, each with their own executive director, effective since October 1.
These are grapes, headed by Bokkie Strauss, pome fruit (Louis Kriel Jr), stone fruit and soft citrus (Chris Steyn) and citrus (Lance Chandler).
Ferreira told me internal logistics would remain in a central unit within Capespan but that all logistical subsidiaries providing a service in the total supply chain of moving fruit from packhouse to shop shelf would be moved from the organisation into a logistics holding company, still to be named and to be headed by himself as managing director.
Capespan's way of doing business is to enter into joint ventures. In the case of this new logistics holding company we would again be looking to sell 50% of the equity, worth around R250 million, to a black empowerment organisation or other interested party. (The new company Fruit Produce Terminals will become a subsidiary of the logistics handling company)
l Surprise Capespan news, though not enitirely unexpected, is that m.d.John Stanbury has resigned to take up a senior appointment at Murray and Roberts in Johannesburg from January 1 next year. Stanbury, says a colleague, has the 'unbelievable' ability to turn troubled companies around and give them a new sense of direction. At M&R he will be charged with resolving the matter of significant losses, said to run into hundreds of millions of Rand, in one of their divisions.