For decades, South Africa’s automotive industry has been a quiet success story. Over 100,000 people work in plants across Rosslyn, Kariega and East London, stamping metal and assembling engines with precision. The sector contributes roughly 5% of GDP and anchors entire local economies. But the cars rolling off those production lines are changing in ways …
A consumer walks into an insurance broker’s office with a problem. She’s just bought an imported second-hand vehicle—not a Chinese brand, but an obscure model from overseas. She needs insurance. The broker contacts five or six insurance companies. All of them decline, or quote at prohibitive rates. The reason? If anything happens to this car, it will …
A feasibility study presented recently has found sufficient industry appetite to establish an automotive cluster in Gauteng, offering a potential lifeline for a sector grappling with mounting global pressures and stalled progress on local content targets. Stephen Price, project lead from BMA who conducted the study for the International Labour Organisation (ILO), said South Africa’s …
Container throughput at South African ports is up nearly 8% year to date. Anchorage times have improved, crane utilisation is climbing, and ship working hours point to a system beginning to stabilise after years of acute strain. For an industry that has watched infrastructure crumble under the weight of state capture, these operational gains offer …
Conventional wisdom suggests that unreliable electricity grids would hinder electric vehicle (EV) adoption. Yet, chronic power shortages in Africa are not blocking progress but rather catalysing solutions that bypass traditional infrastructure limitations entirely. Instead of waiting for grid stability that may never arrive, entrepreneurs and charging infrastructure developers are building systems that treat unreliable grids …
A healthy 32-year-old scrolls through their payslip and does the math. Medical aid costs R2,800 a month, and they haven’t seen a doctor in two years. NHI was signed into law, so the state will catch them if something goes wrong, right? NHI Exists on Paper, Not in Your Pharmacy The National Health Insurance bill …
Justin Barnes, Executive Director of the Toyota Wessels Institute for Manufacturing Studies, has visited semi-knockdown (SKD) assembly plants across the world. He believes his garage at home is equally as sophisticated as most of them. Barnes, like most of us, is cognisant of the slew of Chinese OEMs that continue to enter the South African …