Sharp finds lucrative household effects niche

JAMES HALL MBABANE – When traditional customers dwindle, the only option is to seek out new business by developing previously unexploited niche markets. That has been the necessity this year for Sharp Freight, the Swazi-owned road transport company headquartered at the Matsapha Industrial Estate 30 km east of Mbabane. “We have to think innovatively to stay competitive. Business has taken a downturn in Swaziland this year, and that has affected us,” said Shadreck Mnisi, company director for Sharp Freight. Worst hit has been the sugar industry, as preferential trade agreements that once supported Swaziland’s top export were revised or abandoned. But Mnisi’s fleet of trucks still hauls sugar locally, for domestic usage. The downturn in the textile industry has negatively affected all local road and rail transport firms, and in the case of Sharp Freight has dampened the prospect of new business from that once thriving sector. But new clients are at hand from an unexpected source: professors at the University of Swaziland. The campus is located just two kilometres from Sharp Freight’s new office/warehouse complex. “We are contacted by lecturers from Malawi, Zambia and South Africa who need to have household goods from their home countries shipped here. Or departing professors must return home with their belongings. We are interested in opening new routes to those destinations,” said Mnisi.