valley two hours’ drive south-east of Cape Town, Berene Sauls is running way behind schedule. The crush from her latest harvest was delayed, bottling often slows to a standstill and she’s been forced to repackage badly labelled batches of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Decades of underinvestment in dilapidated coal-fired power plants has left Eskom struggling to keep the lights on. Unable to meet demand, it resorts to outages that can last as long as 12 hours a day, leaving schools, hospitals, restaurants and businesses relying on backup generators. The central bank estimates load shedding curbed economic growth by as much as 3.2 percentage points last year and forecasts just 0.4% growth this year.
Load shedding also halts bottling lines, leading to production delays and wastage of packaging materials. Saul’s small winery cannot afford a generator for its packing shed, leaving her team in a frantic rush to prepare, label and package bottles before the next four-hour power cut. She’s so far managed to fulfil large orders and avoid lost sales.
The winery is getting cost estimations for off-grid options including solar, inverters and batteries. “Consumers are also struggling,” Basson said. “We have only increased wine prices by 7% this year. It’s impossible to recover the entire cost from price increases.”