Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) will be one of the sponsors of Proudly South African’s 8th annual Buy Local Summit and Expo, to be held at the Sandton Convention Centre on 12 and 13th March 2019.
“We are delighted to be supporting this worthwhile initiative, which is very much in tune with CCBSA’s ongoing efforts to promote an inclusive economy in South Africa. We took seriously President Ramaphosa’s call at the 2018 Presidential Jobs Summit for business to partner with government in re-igniting growth and re-industrialising the country, and we believe the Buy Local Summit & Expo plays an important role in promoting local industries and creating demand for their products,” says CCBSA Managing Director, Velaphi Ratshefola.
Mr Ratshefola says that CCBSA has been active in promoting localisation within its own business for some time in order to help broaden and deepen South Africa’s pool of world-class suppliers. Re-industrialising the economy to replace the many manufacturers who could not compete when the country rejoined the global economy is considered to be vital in order to kick start economic growth as manufacturing has the highest multiplier effect on the total economy of all sectors.
“CCBSA has made massive commitments to spur the growth of existing companies within its own supplier ecosystem, and to provide the right conditions to incubate new entrepreneurs,” he added.
At its recent Supplier Development Conference, CCBSA announced that it had committed R100 million over five years to assist the development of its black- and black-female-owned suppliers. The funding will be used to offer qualifying existing CCBSA suppliers preferential rates to access funding needed to deliver on contracts.
CCBSA has also committed to diverting R3.9 billion of procurement expenditure to transformed suppliers over three years. Mr Ratshefola announced that it had exceeded its first-year target by R200 million.
“We are particularly excited by the fact that Day One of the Buy Local event is an SMME Workshop, designed to give this important sector an opportunity to interact with organisations that regulate, legislate and register the sector. Understanding what the legal and regulatory frameworks are, and how to negotiate them, is critical for the success of SMMEs,” he says. “Most South Africans want to support home-grown enterprises for a number of good reasons, and initiatives like this are vital in ensuring that we have a growing number of such enterprises who can deliver.”
