Businesses at their wits’ end due to ongoing load shedding

Small to medium businesses are at their wits’ end with load shedding, with some having to choose between disappointing clients or investing in solar power or generators.

While some businesses ponder spending even more money others have to wait out the hours of load shedding.

Cape Town gin distillers and manufacturers of the Two Gingers Gin, Simon Cranswick and Wynand de Vries, have told of how they had been forced to throw out dozens of litres of alcohol after the distilling process was ruined during load shedding.

“This is costing us heavily, because it means we can’t deliver to our clients and that means they can’t deliver to their clients,” Cranswick said.

De Vries explained that distilling gin was much like baking a cake where the temperature was critical to the end product.

“It’s like baking a cake. You have a recipe of botanicals and as it starts to boil different flavours come out at different temperatures.

“If you have a drop in electricity and you can’t regulate your temperature, you mess up the ‘cake’ and the ‘cake’ flops. Of course it’s very expensive, because alcohol is extremely expensive as a raw material,” De Vries said.

Cranswick said the immediate plan was to have a generator installed which will be an additional cost for the business. De Vries added that the aim was to continue manufacturing the gin.

“At the moment we can’t manufacture, because you need about eight to twelve hours to do an (alcohol) run. We need a consistent electricity supply and with this load shedding right now, we can’t manufacture at all and it’s crippling us,” De Vries said.

The pair said they would investigate possibly investing in solar for the long term.

“It’s costing us a lot of money not only in terms of opportunity costs by not getting our product out because we can’t manufacture, but also because we are investing in things we shouldn’t really be investing in,” De Vries said.

Meanwhile, One and Only hair salon in Claremont has had to shut down operations during load shedding.

Doris Zachariah has either had to open the salon later than usual and close much earlier. The barbers in the salon are also unable to work during load shedding.

“The situation has never gotten this bad before. We have had load shedding here and there, but this will cripple our business because it means we can’t use hair dryers and hair clippers to cut hair,” Zachariah said.

She added that if load shedding continued she might have to close as she spends hours not being able to work.

Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry president, Jacques Moolman, said while no sector had been spared from load shedding, the manufacturing industry was the hardest hit.

"Manufacturers are losing revenue due to lost production output while simultaneously absorbing escalating input costs, notably fuel.

"It’s a double whammy that is culling one of the most important parts of our economy. And it’s often the smaller businesses that suffer the most without access to back-up power.

"Many manufacturers must stop or delay production during load shedding.

"Some production cycles are lengthy and are hugely affected by intermittent power, such as in the boat building sector where not all yards have large generators to keep production going.

“Shopping malls report reduced activity during outages, and the same goes for the retail sector," Moolman said.

He said the frustration from chamber members had prompted them to fast track the chambers' new "Network of Networks" initiative which seeks to link economic sectors within a broad mandate of removing obstacles to growth.

Asked if there were any plans to ensure that businesses continue operating during load shedding, Eskom said only secondary customers who were able to curtail their load may be excluded from load shedding.

These are, however, mostly industrial customers.

“Customers must be able to provide a pre-defined amount of load to be curtailed within a maximum of two hours on instruction from the licensee.

“Once again, the condition that these customers can be isolated applies,” the power utility said.