by Ekrem Duman | Aug 26, 2026 | South Africa Company Stories, South Africa Industry, Energy & Chemicals
⚡ TL;DRBarloworld is over a century old, was once a sprawling industrial conglomerate spanning cement, steel, motor, appliances and equipment, and has narrowed to a business built around Caterpillar dealerships — where the real value lies not in selling...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 26, 2026 | South Africa Company Stories, South Africa Industry, Energy & Chemicals
⚡ TL;DRBidvest built a diversified services and distribution group by acquiring unglamorous businesses — cleaning, security, freight terminals, office products, catering — and running them through a radically decentralized structure where managers...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 26, 2026 | South Africa Company Stories, South Africa Industry, Energy & Chemicals
⚡ TL;DRTransnet operates South Africa’s freight rail, ports and pipelines, and its deterioration has cost exporters billions in unshipped commodities — locomotives idle for want of spare parts after a contract dispute, cable theft crippling...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 26, 2026 | South Africa Company Stories, South Africa Industry, Energy & Chemicals
⚡ TL;DREskom supplied some of the world’s cheapest electricity for decades, was told not to build new capacity, ran out of it in 2007, spent two hundred billion rand on two power stations that arrived years late and defective, was systematically looted...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 26, 2026 | South Africa Company Stories, South Africa Industry, Energy & Chemicals
⚡ TL;DRSasol turned coal into petrol using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis at industrial scale, giving apartheid South Africa fuel security under oil embargo, built a genuinely world-leading chemicals technology business on the back of it, nearly destroyed itself with...
