The Challenges of Load Shedding in South Africa

An update from Tayrene at Barrett's Ridge in South Africa who is trying her best to produce an order of Beer Bread for JTS but is facing extreme challenges.

South Africa is currently experiencing massive load shedding. This means the government has put planned power outages in place in order to reduce the load on the national power generation plant.  Being without power for up to 9 and a half hours a day affects every aspect of our supply chain, from the cutting and printing of our calico to sewing our bags and packing the product.

Due to our product being mostly had made and hand packed, this is really taking a toll on us and our production line capabilities. This past Friday we were without power from 10 am to 2:30pm. This gave us a working day of only 2 and a half hours.

We are currently cutting our calico by hand which is extremely time consuming and our seamstresses are unable to sew any bags during load shedding.  Alternative power supplies such as generators and portable batteries are costly for any small business and difficult to fully charge when we have a 4 and a half hour load sheds.

Economists and analysts have warned that despite promises from the government to get new capacity online and having load shedding resolved within two years – or even sooner – South Africans should expect the situation to get worse, particularly in the coming months as the country heads into winter and energy demand shoots up.