Botash enters local retail salt market
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday February 1, 2016 18:00
Botsalt will be competing against locally produced Flamingo Salt and the Cerebos which is produced by Botash sister company Chlor Alkali Holdings (CAH) Group, a South African company. Cerebos is owned by CAH, which holds 50 percent stake in Botash. CAH also owns Walvis Bay port, which competes with Botash regionally.
“We are currently trying to market this product locally, as well as secure some space in local supermarkets,” Montwedi Mphathi, the managing director of Botash, said. “For now, Botsalt is sold in the Zambian market after they successfully embraced it.” Mphathi said he did not see Cerebos as competition as they were part of Botash. “We are learning a lot from Cerebos in terms of marketing’ They are assisting us to enter the retail sector, build our brand because they are registered with reputable supermarkets,” he said.
Annually, Botash produces 300,000 tonnes of soda ash and 650,000 tonnes of salt. Botash exports about 42 percent of its salt to South Africa, followed by Zambia with 24 percent, Zimbabwe with 16 percent, Malawi with seven percent, DRC with two percent while four percent is used in the country for cattle feeding.
“Locally, government is our main customer,” Mphathi said. “They buy bulk of the salt mostly for livestock. For the past year, they purchased P20 million worth of salt from us.”
In April last year, the government banned imports of less than 100 kilogrammes of packaged salt in a move aimed at stimulating domestic production and creating employment. The ban was imposed because the raw material is available in Botswana, and the need to develop the value chain of the specific sector.