Big turnaround in Zambia
ALAN PEAT
FROM THE records of the company’s forwarding and consolidations in and out of Africa, South Africa’s export market into neighbouring states is suffering from a combination of the strong rand and devalued local currencies, according to Jeff Smit, owner of Cross Africa.
This, he told FTW, is pricing SA products out of favour, and his company’s movement of transit containers through SA and overborder indicates that sources like China, India and South America have gained preference.
“Our goods are 100% more expensive than one-and-a-half years ago when the rand was 14 to the US dollar,” Smit added, “and most of the northern neighbours have devalued, making things even worse.
“People are looking at buying goods from alternative markets and are prepared to wait for delivery because the price is so much better.
“Some of the bulk products are continuing to be sourced from here because of their bulk and transport costs from overseas. But everything would be better if the rand was somewhere about the 9-10 against the dollar.”
Cross Africa’s main markets are Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, DRC and Mozambique.
Zambia has shown an “amazing turnaround,” he said.
From his experiences in the project cargo market, he has seen a large number of big manufacturing plants going into that country - with duty-free imports of raw materials making finished goods from that country so much cheaper.
“It’s the only one showing real growth,” Smit said, “and it’s now importing raw materials for manufacturing candles, shoes, pipes and the like.
“But I can see from our consolidations that a lot of this product is not now coming from SA.”
The current scene in the road transport market is more downloads than uploads, Smit added.
“More agricultural and mining products are coming into SA as our buying power has increased,” he said.
But this has its bad side. In Zambia, for example, copper exports can’t come out, because not enough trucks are going in - a turnaround from the previous situation where a lot of vehicles had to travel empty on the southbound leg.
