The company's MD Montwedi Mphathi told Mmegi Business last week, "The huge costs of transporting our products, mostly Soda Ash from Botswana to our markets within the SADC region, particularly South Africa (Botswana Ash's main market for the product) make us less competitive when compared to other firms in the same business from countries such as the United States of America (USA)," he said.He explained that US companies have it cheaper because they transport huge tonnes of soda ash.
"Ships that transport their products, mostly soda ash, also go back with return loads of products from other manufacturers and suppliers in Africa to the USA," he said, adding that this ensures US transporters offset costs through back and forth business."This is the same with other countries such as Kenya who export their products to South Africa and other African nations. With us, wagons come back home empty after delivering in South Africa but we still pay for fuel and other costs they incur coming back," he said.
