‘It’s the right thing to do’ Danie Maartens … Payment for the stake will be partially in cash, the remainder through financing institutions. RAY SMUTS CAPESPAN subsidiary Fresh Produce Terminals is well and truly on the road to broad-based black economic empowerment with the imminent endorsement of a R104 million transaction with three BEE partners. What is more, they will be the first involved in South Africa’s multi-billion rand export fruit industry. At the heart of the deal, long in the making, is a 26% stake in South Africa’s largest portside fruit cooling organisation, with modern facilities in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and the Mozambican capital of Maputo. The BEE partners include: • Nozala Investments, a 100% - mostly rural - women-owned company (some 500 000 of them) whose interests include Sasol/Exel, Afripak and Kumba Resources. • Calulo, operating in a logistics environment including ports’ bunkering and mining • Zikhethele, involved in supplying FPT terminals with labour at all its terminals, a permanent complement of 120 and temporary component of around 1 250. FPT board chairman Dr Dawie Ferreira and the company’s recently appointed MD Danie Maartens were due to conclude the transaction on September 1. Maartens acknowledges negotiations with Nozala go back a good while, five years to be precise, to protracted, later fruitless, negotiations on a strategic partnership in FPT by UK-based Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. This resulted in the Nozala project going onto the “backburner” for a while. “The thinking behind the sale,” explains Maartens, “is that we embrace empowerment. It is the right thing to do and representative of the rest of the way the country is going. “After Mersey, we decided to take a re-look at a full BEE transaction by issuing invitations to various organisations about a year ago. “The three chosen partners are investing in a very stable company, with definite growth potential, and it brings to FPT a BEE component in that we are not only compliant with the Maritime Charter but also so in terms of our lease with our landlord, the National Ports Authority (NPA).” Payment for the stake will be partially in cash, the remainder through financing institutions, and the consortium will be represented on the FPT board in relation to shareholding. Ferreira believes participation by the three-member consortium is an indicator of FPT playing “a very positive role” in furthering the concept of empowerment in South Africa, for which “good economic and political reasons exist.
