Despite contingency measures, businesses in Nelson Mandela Bay, the heart of the country's vehicle manufacturing industry, reported losing R1-billion a month in the first six months of 2023 due to rolling blackouts.

Nelson Mandela Bay businesses have been losing R1-billion a month since the start of 2023 due to severe load shedding, a survey conducted by the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber has found.

These staggering financial losses have forced some of the larger businesses in the metro to consider retrenching their workforces by as much as 20% should high-stage load shedding continue.

Apart from scheduled load shedding, 34 major power outages were caused by the tripping of substations in the metro's industrial areas since January 2023. Some of these outages have been linked to the toll blackouts are taking on electrical infrastructure.

"This is a high-risk issue to business and is caused by vandalism and theft of substation infrastructure, lack of maintenance and damage to infrastructure which was not designed to be switched on and off intermittently," said Denise van Huyssteen, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber.

Other risks highlighted by the industry's Mikel Mabasa earlier this year include local government instability in the metro, a lack of municipal services and the threat of sanctions against South Africa for its stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Load shedding has been considerably curtailed in the past few weeks, but was...