Action before transport strike kept inventories high

Namibia Breweries Limited has expressed their relief that the transport strike in South Africa has come to an end. The Breweries said it managed to weather the challenges due to quick and pro-active planning and additional storage arrangements. Sister company, Namibia Dairies was not so fortunate, announcing that logistical lines for carton packaging have been severely disrupted.
Wessie van der Westhuizen, Managing Director of NBL advised that NBL became aware of the imminent strike a week before its actual commencement. “As we import most of our packaging material from our neighbour such as glass, cans, crown corks, labels and the like, we made an immediate plan by ordering additional stock and also sourced more warehouse capacity for storage – both for imported goods as well as the stock designated for South Africa.”  
NBL has fortunately not incurred any financial losses during the strike. This was made possible through the collective ownership taken by the functional teams within NBL that ensured that the company continued producing at maximum capacity. Van der Westhuizen, however, added that one or two more weeks of striking in SA would have ultimately led to stock shortages in the market. He added: “The impact of something like this for the company and our nation at large is incomprehensible. RSA is Namibia’s major trading partner where close to 80% of our daily commodities are sourced from. Supermarkets would have been running out of stock, value addition activities in Namibia could have grounded to a halt due to the absence of packaging materials, industries that export to RSA would have come to a standstill and this is not only true for Namibia but for many countries in the immediate neighbourhood of SA and those that are trading directly with South Africa.  “It is unfortunate that some businesses and employee representatives in today’s modern business world still fail to find common solutions through dialogue and employee engagement rather than resorting to strikes that significantly impact the financial performance of a business and the economy as a whole.”