Wannabe exporters taste the fruits from the other side

27 March 2017

 

Johannesburg’s prospective exporters were given a taste of the lucrative but highly competitive international markets when the City’s Economic Development Department held a one-day export awareness seminar at the Gauteng Investment Centre in Sandton last week.

 

The seminar – held in collaboration with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency – took them through key steps that need to be followed to scale heights in markets abroad.

The event formed part of the City of Johannesburg’s efforts to achieve 5% economic growth and reduce unemployment by 6% by the end of the current municipal term in 2021.

It also had a question-and-answer session during which local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) highlighted challenges they had come across when they tried to access international markets. The challenges discouraging many potential exporters related to, among others, standardisation and a lack of knowledge, funding and capacity.

However, Lesego Lekgwe of Devland, in the south of Johannesburg, said she was determined to look for new markets abroad because South Africa was, as she put it, “less responsive”.

The 26-year-old is founder and Creative Director of Fantacepts, which trades in handmade ornaments.  

Lekgwe said attending the workshop had helped her find ways of accessing markets abroad without necessarily growing in South Africa first. She is now targeting the tourism market.

“I’m trying to get into the high-end of the bead market but my capacity is limited to go international at the moment,” Lekgwe said. She said the workshop had shed light on ways of expanding capacity.

“It’s very hard to export my products to other parts of the continent because I cannot mass produce rapidly,” she said.

Lizwe Radebe wants to bring about change in his community but is restricted by the limited space from which his fruit beverage, Eezi Fruit, is produced. He is determined to create employment opportunities for the youth in Diepkloof, Soweto, where he was raised.

For five years now his mission has been impeded by a lack of facilities to grow his beverage-producing company to its fullest potential. “Our company is exporting currently. We do not have a strong base in South Africa as we do in Malawi,” Radebe said.

He said the workshop had helped him find ways of creating a stronger base in Johannesburg to enable him to export his products to other countries beyond Africa. Radebe said the challenges his company was facing were the lack industrial parks space and fluctuating and unaffordable rents.  He said his product was negatively affected as a result, forcing his company to cut down on staff.

Nick Theledi, Deputy Director of Investment Promotion in the City’s Economic Development Department, said the City needed effectively running export businesses to grow the local economy. “We need to have more exporters in Johannesburg to grow the economy,” he said.