by Dev_SACCAWU | Labour Market News
Woolworths Holdings Limited has announced its ambitious plan to acquire in2food, a leading prepared foods manufacturer in South Africa.
Image: Supplied
Woolworths Holdings Limited (WHL) unveiled an ambitious plan to acquire 100% of the shares in in2food, a well-regarded prepared foods manufacturer based in South Africa.
in2food has established itself as a market leader in convenience foods, generating revenues exceeding R5 billion annually through a diverse portfolio comprising freshly prepared goods, fresh produce, long-life items, as well as ambient and bakery products.
Notably, Woolworths Food is the largest customer of in2food, which also supplies a variety of local and international companies through food service and wholesale channels.
Commenting on the longstanding partnership between Woolworths and in2food, Woolworths Group CEO, Roy Bagattini, said this acquisition represents a compelling opportunity to bring a key strategic capability closer to the Woolworths Foods business, strengthening one of the core points of differentiation in our premium food offering.
He noted that the acquisition will see in2food operate as a standalone business within Woolworths, with its experienced senior leadership team remaining in place.
Richard Cooper, CEO of in2food, said the transaction further enhances Woolworths Foods’ ability to protect product quality, innovation, and availability, which are core to its differentiated customer proposition.
He also expressed gratitude towards Old Mutual Private Equity and other exiting shareholders for their support and guidance during in2food’s growth journey since 2015.
Bagattini made it clear that this acquisition will not alter Woolworths’ broader food sourcing model.
“Our unique relationship with our suppliers is what differentiates us and is fundamental to delivering our premium food offering,” he said.
He emphasised that the transaction enhances the already strong relationship with one of their most innovative suppliers, benefitting the entire value chain and ultimately the end-customers.
The group expects the acquisition to be earnings accretive, even before factoring in operational efficiencies anticipated to emerge over time. The purchase consideration will be settled in cash, leveraging Woolworths’ current financing facilities.
However, the completion of the transaction remains dependent on the fulfilment of both regulatory and commercial suspensive conditions, including the approval from South Africa’s competition authorities.
Source: https://iol.co.za/business/2026-03-17-woolworths-set-to-strengthen-its-food-offering-with-in2food-acquisition/
by Dev_SACCAWU | Labour Market News
Eskom, Smart Meters, Load Shedding
Eskom is deploying over 444,000 smart meters nationwide to improve electricity management, reduce load shedding, and modernize the power grid, focusing on provinces with high network losses. This initiative also sees Eskom achieving 300 days without load shedding due to improved plant performance. Simultaneously, other developments such as cucumber shortages and the Traditional and Khoisan Leaders Bill are also in focus.
Eskom, South Africa’s primary electricity provider, has made significant strides in modernizing the nation’s power infrastructure by deploying over 444,000 smart meters across the country. This ambitious project is a cornerstone of Eskom‘s broader strategy to enhance electricity management, mitigate the impact of load shedding, and optimize the efficiency of the national grid.
The rollout, strategically focused on provinces experiencing the highest network losses, including Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal, reflects a targeted approach to address critical infrastructure needs. The implementation of these smart meters represents a crucial step towards creating a more resilient and technologically advanced electricity system, enabling more effective monitoring and control of power distribution across the country. Customers will benefit from increased transparency in their energy consumption, empowering them to make informed decisions about their usage patterns and potentially lower their electricity bills. This proactive initiative is not just about upgrading technology; it is about building a sustainable energy future for South Africa, ensuring reliable power supply for all citizens and businesses. The installation of smart meters also contributes to improved billing accuracy, eliminating discrepancies and fostering greater trust between the utility and its customers. Moreover, the data collected from these smart meters allows Eskom to gain valuable insights into the grid’s performance, facilitating proactive maintenance, identifying potential issues before they escalate, and ultimately minimizing the frequency and duration of power outages. This concerted effort demonstrates Eskom’s commitment to modernizing its operations and adapting to the evolving demands of the energy landscape, creating a more efficient and reliable electricity supply for all South Africans. Furthermore, the implementation aligns with global trends towards smart grid technologies, positioning South Africa as a participant in the worldwide shift towards a more sustainable and technologically advanced energy future.\Simultaneously, Eskom is celebrating a remarkable achievement, reaching 300 days without experiencing load shedding, a significant milestone showcasing the improvements in plant performance and a substantial decrease in power outages across the country. This positive development is attributable to a combination of factors, including enhanced plant maintenance, optimized operational strategies, and proactive grid management. The reduction in load shedding is a welcome relief for businesses and households, allowing for increased productivity and a better quality of life. Alongside the technological advancements, this achievement highlights the dedication and hard work of Eskom’s workforce in ensuring a reliable electricity supply. The company’s focus on operational excellence and proactive problem-solving has contributed significantly to this positive trend. While these advancements are noteworthy, challenges persist, and Eskom continues to work towards addressing them, particularly focusing on long-term solutions for sustainable energy security. Ongoing investments in infrastructure, combined with strategic partnerships and innovative technologies, are essential to further strengthen the power grid and ensure the continued reliability of electricity supply for South Africa. Moreover, this positive progress is a testament to the resilience of the South African economy and its capacity for growth. In addition to Eskom’s progress, various other developments are taking place across the country. Unfavorable weather conditions have impacted the supply of cucumbers, leading to price increases as the demand remains strong. Political landscapes also evolve, with the tabling of the new Traditional and Khoisan Leaders Bill, addressing complex issues of land rights and leadership. Local authorities are actively addressing challenges, like the closure of an unsanitary cow hide cooking site in Johannesburg, along with the detection of a suspected illegal gold refinery. Meanwhile, in the world of sports, Mamelodi Sundowns’ player Nuno Santos is proving his worth as a key player despite adapting to the different style of play. Excitement builds up for fans as the Six Nations come to a close with the newest World Rugby rankings now published.\The widespread installation of smart meters represents a significant investment in South Africa’s energy future. These devices transmit real-time data on electricity consumption, enabling consumers to track their usage patterns and make informed choices to conserve energy and manage their expenses more effectively. This level of granular data also allows Eskom to optimize power distribution, identify and address grid inefficiencies, and proactively manage potential outages. The positive impacts are not limited to the individual consumer level; the enhanced data collection capabilities will contribute to the stabilization of the entire energy grid. The move is also aligned with global trends, where smart grids and smart metering are a key aspect of building a sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure. Besides its technological importance, the rollout is also an indication of Eskom’s financial and operational capabilities, which are crucial for ensuring the stability of power supply. The smart meter rollout is a reflection of the organization’s focus on improving customer service and operational efficiency. The long-term objectives include not only reducing load shedding and improving grid efficiency, but also promoting greater energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. Eskom’s efforts also encompass the modernization of its infrastructure, including the ongoing refurbishment and maintenance of power plants. This holistic approach will ensure a more reliable and sustainable energy future for the country. The initiative to improve the grid and curb outages is critical for economic growth. Reliable power is a fundamental requirement for businesses and industries, therefore contributing to job creation and investments. Further, the project’s success is dependent on collaboration, involving government agencies, technology partners, and the end-users. Community engagement and educational programs are vital to ensure consumers know how to make the most of the new technology and reap the benefits of smart metering. This is a crucial step towards modernizing the South African energy sector and driving economic prosperity.
Source: https://za.headtopics.com/news/eskom-spearheads-smart-meter-rollout-across-south-africa-to-81006052
by Dev_SACCAWU | Labour Market News
Postbank, FSCA, Financial Services License
Postbank has been granted a Financial Services Provider (FSP) license by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), announced by Deputy Minister Mondli Gungubele. This allows Postbank to offer financial advice and intermediary services and is a key step in its transformation strategy.
Postbank has been registered as a licensed financial services provider with the Financial Sector Conduct Authority . The Deputy Minister of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele, announced the regulatory landmark for the state-owned bank.
Gungubele said that the license, issued under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act , authorises Postbank to provide financial advice and intermediary services related to financial products. To obtain and maintain an FSP license, institutions must meet strict regulatory requirements covering governance, compliance, risk management, operational capability, and consumer protection. Gungubele said the milestone reflects progress in rebuilding Postbank into a sustainable and well-governed state-owned retail bank.“The granting of this license is an important regulatory milestone for Postbank and a strong signal of the progress being made to stabilise and strengthen the institution,” said the Deputy Minister. “It demonstrates that Postbank is meeting the regulatory standards required to operate responsibly within South Africa’s financial sector.” The achievement forms part of the bank’s five-year transformation strategy, built around three pillars: Stabilise, Build and Differentiate. Obtaining the FSP licence represents a key step in the Build phase of the strategy, allowing it to expand the financial services it offers. The license provides additional assurance that services are delivered under a regulatory regime regarding customers and social grant beneficiaries who already rely on Postbank.While the bank has celebrated the receipt of the FSP licence, it has not yet acquired a full commercial banking licence from the South African Reserve Bank via the Prudential Authority. “The development signals continued progress in building a capable state-owned banking institution that advances financial inclusion and expands access to affordable financial services,” said Gungubele. “This achievement represents another important step in Postbank’s long-term journey towards becoming a fully-fledged commercial bank that serves the needs of South Africans while contributing to the strength and stability of the country’s financial system.”When it was under the South African Post Office, Postbank offered some financial services, but it was strictly a savings subsidiary. After President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Postbank Amendment Bill into law in September 2023, the Postbank underwent a major change. The new legislation formally transferred Postbank’s shareholding from the embattled South African Post Office to the government. The shift enabled the creation of a bank-controlling company, Postbank SoC Limited, which will enable Postbank to become a fully-fledged bank in South Africa. Business Talk – Quadrupleplay CEO Sthembiso Dlamini unpacks what needs to be done to bridge the digital divide in South AfricaWhy the Iran war dollar surge could reverse South Africa’s rand rally and what forex traders should do next.
Source: https://za.headtopics.com/news/postbank-receives-financial-services-license-from-fsca-81114888
by Dev_SACCAWU | Labour Market News
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) presented its submission on the 2026/27 Budget’s Division of Revenue Bill and the 2025/26 Budget’s Special Appropriation Bill to Parliament’s Standing Committee: Appropriation.
COSATU is extremely disappointed with the lackluster 2026/27 Budget and Medium-Term Expenditure Framework. Whilst appreciating that there are some important allocations that COSATU campaigned for in the Budget, it fails to respond decisively to the fundamental crises facing the working class and the economy, in particular a 41.1% unemployment rate, economic growth far below the 3% needed to create jobs, struggling public and municipal services and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), entrenched levels of poverty and inequality, and endemic crime and corruption. Tragically, the Budget is focused on balancing the books, not on aggressively kickstarting economic growth or tackling unemployment.
Key to providing an environment where the economy can take off and the lives of the working class are improved is to ensure that frontline public services have the resources needed to fulfill their constitutional and developmental mandates. We welcome investments in health and education, in particular R18 billion allocations to enroll 300 000 Grade R learners; R7.8 billion for the National Health Insurance Grants, plus R24 billion for revitalising public healthcare, R92 billion for district health programmes, the building of seven new provincial hospitals and R21 billion for the employment of doctors over the MTEF.
Local government remains the state’s Achilles’ heel, with more than 60% of municipalities in financial distress and many struggling to provide basic services or pay staff. The allocation of R27 billion to improve metros’ abilities to provide basic services and bill correctly is critical, as are plans to strengthen the national government’s ability to timeously intervene in and hold failing municipalities accountable. Plans to connect over 320 000 houses to electricity and roll out 258 000 smart meters are welcome. However, these interventions do not go far enough to capacitate often highly dysfunctional municipalities, tackle rising municipal debt, or deal with corrupt and incompetent municipal management.
Much more must be done to enable Eskom to reduce the price of electricity, plus return Transnet and Metro Rail to full capacity to unlock mining, manufacturing, and agricultural jobs as well as to provide efficient public transport for urban workers. The substantial infrastructure investments over the MTEF of R1.07 trillion, in particular for energy, rail, ports, water, roads, and airports, will help boost economic growth and jobs.
The absence of a bold stimulus package for SMMES, industrial and export sectors badly needed for boosting economic growth and jobs is deeply worrying. It is beyond disappointing that the Presidential Employment Programme has been cut by half despite SONA’s commitments to increase it.
Although there are important allocations for some frontline services and infrastructure, COSATU is extremely frustrated that Treasury and government collectively, have once again reduced the Budget to balancing books and missed the opportunity to table a bold stimulus package that would fix public and municipal services, spur economic growth, boost employment, provide relief for the poor and unemployed, and ramp up tax compliance. COSATU will be seeking urgent engagements with Treasury and government to ensure these failures are addressed. We cannot afford to continue to normalise 1% economic growth nor 41.1% unemployment. The patience of the working class and society are not unlimited.
Issued by COSATU
Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)
Mobile: 082 785 0687
Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za
Source: https://mediadon.co.za/cosatu-presented-its-submission-on-the-budgets-division-of-revenue-and-special-appropriations-bills/
by Dev_SACCAWU | Labour Market News
Understanding South Africa’s economic disappearance beyond unemployment
South Africa’s economic debate has become fixated on a single statistic: the unemployment rate. It rises, falls, shocks and disappoints, dominating headlines and political debate. Yet that number increasingly obscures a deeper structural shift unfolding beneath the surface of the labour market. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the official unemployment rate eased to 31.4%.
According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, approximately 17.1 million South Africans were employed in the fourth quarter of 2025. At the same time, another 17.1 million people aged 15–64 were classified as outside the labour force. In other words, the number of working-age South Africans who are not even counted as participants in the labour market is now roughly equal to the number who are employed. This is not a typical labour market imbalance. It is a structural fracture. Public debate tends to focus on the 7.8 million officially unemployed. Yet beyond that figure lies a far larger pool of economic exclusion.
Stats SA reports that 3.7 million people are now classified as discouraged work seekers — individuals who want work but have stopped searching because they believe none is available. Discouraged workers make up the overwhelming majority of the country’s 4.6 million “potential labour force”, representing more than 80% of that group.These numbers tell a story that is rarely discussed openly: South Africa is not only struggling to create jobs. It is gradually producing a population that is withdrawing from the labour market altogether. The problem begins early.
Among young people aged 15 to 24, roughly three quarters are classified as inactive, meaning they are neither working nor actively seeking work. Around 34% of youth in this age group are not in employment, education ortraining (NEET). This translates to millions of young South Africans entering adulthood without meaningful attachment to work, training or productive economic activity. Even more concerning is that many of those counted as unemployed have never worked before.
Stats SA data show that a large share of unemployed youth lack any prior work experience, meaning the labour market is failing not only to reabsorb workers, but to initiate millions into economic life in the first place.This dynamic places South Africa in an unusual position compared with many other emerging economies.
The OECD’s 2025 Economic Survey of South Africa notes that the country has the lowest employment rate among G20 and OECD economies, combined with one of the highest unemployment rates. Yet unlike countries such as India, Indonesia or Mexico, South Africa does not compensate through a large informal sector. In many emerging economies, people excluded from formal employment often find opportunities in small enterprise, street trade or informal work.
In South Africa, that transition appears far weaker. When formal jobs fail to expand, large numbers of people do not shift into informal employment. Instead, many simply do not workat all.This distinction is critical. It means that labour market exclusion in South Africa often leads not to alternative forms of productivity, but to prolonged inactivity.
Slow economic growth has compounded the challenge. The International Monetary Fund projects South Africa’s economy to grow at only about 1.4% in 2026, reflecting persistent structural constraints, infrastructure bottlenecks and governance challenges. In a low-growth environment, labour markets become brittle. Entry opportunities shrink, competition intensifies,and the pathways into work narrow. For young people attempting to enter the labour market for the first time,the barriers become even higher. Yet growth alone cannot explain the scale of the problem.
South Africa’s labour market is also shaped by spatial inequality, transport costs and the lingering geography of apartheid-era planning. Many job seekers live far from economic centres, facing high commuting costs that effectively price them out of employment opportunities.The OECD notes that long travel times and high transport costs continue to limit labour mobility, reinforcing exclusion even where jobs exist.These structural factors help explain why improvements in the unemployment rate can coexist with deepening economic fragility.
A labour market can appear marginally healthier on paper while becoming more hollow beneath the surface.The language used to describe South Africa’s employment crisis therefore matters more than we often realise. Unemployment suggests waiting. Economic disappearance suggests erosion. It is the erosion of confidence, the erosion of skills through inactivity, the erosion of work identity before it ever forms. Once individuals spend extended periods outside the labour market, re-entry becomes significantly more difficult. When exclusion becomes structural, unemployment statistics begin to describe only the visible edge of a much deeper economic fracture.
A society cannot sustain long-term stability when millions of its citizens exist inside the population but outside the economy. Even debates around social grants are frequently misunderstood in this context.
The Social Relief of Distressgrant, currently R370 per month, sits well below the poverty line and cannot plausibly substitute for employment income. The evidence suggests the problem is not excessive comfort outside the labour market, but insufficient access into it.South Africa therefore faces a challenge that goes beyond job creation alone.The country must rebuild the mechanisms that connect people to economic participation in the first place —from education-to-work transitions and apprenticeships to labour mobility, enterprise formation and the basic infrastructure that allows people to reach opportunities.
The central question for policymakers can no longer be limited to how many people are unemployed. It must also ask: how many people are becoming unreachable by the economy itself? Because when millions begin to disappear from the labour market entirely, the crisis is no longer unemployment alone. It is economic disappearance. And once disappearance becomes normal, recovery becomes far harder than any quarterly statistic is able to reveal.
Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist with extensive experience in strategic risk and industrial operations. She holds a Diploma in Business Management (Accounting) from Brunel University, UK, and is an MBA candidate at Henley Business School, South Africa.
*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.
Source: https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/understanding-south-africas-economic-disappearance-beyond-unemployment/ar-AA1XOfzD?ocid=BingNewsVerp
