Report on South Africa

Fisher International profiles: South Africa

The continent of Africa is the second largest of Fisher International’s defined papermaking regions of the world. This region represents about 20% of the world’s land mass and encompasses nearly 15% of the world’s population at just over 1 Billion people. In spite of its size, Africa is under-represented as a tissue making region producing around 2% of the world’s capacity. South Africa, the focus of this profile, has the second largest production capacity in Africa accounting for about one third of the region capacity. The profile of South Africa will include information on the production capacity, machines and relative comparisons of the participants in the region.

Both Africa and country of South Africa tissue making is biased toward relatively narrow machines (Figure 1) with low production rates (Figure 3). Machine technical age population (Figure 2) indicates recent investments for both South Africa with 20% of the machines less than 5 years old and the remainder of Africa with 40% of the machines less than 5 years old. Typical paper costs (Figure 3) vary broadly in South Africa influenced by primarily by fiber and labor cost differences. Paper cost in the remainder of Africa is less variable concentrating at two levels differentiated by the use of recycle or virgin fiber.

By-country capacity in Africa is dominated by Egypt and South Africa (Figure 5) jointly representing nearly 80% of the region capacity. The distribution of machines (Figure 6) is somewhat less than the capacity would suggest with Egypt and South Africa representing 63% or the operating machines. This is another testament to the smaller size machines typical in Africa. A complete picture can be seen by combining Technical Age and Production on a bubble chart (Figure 7) with the bubble size indicating country and number of operating machines.

Geographically, the tissue capacity is located in three general concentrations (Figure 8) within Africa. The distribution within South Africa is less concentrated (Figure 9) with mills dispersed widely throughout the country.

Click on charts below to view a larger version

Figure 1 Bar chart displaying the distribution of paper machine widths comparing South Africa with other T&T machines in Africa.

Figure 2 Bar chart displaying the distribution of paper machine technical ages comparing South Africa with other T&T machines in Africa.

Figure 3 Bar chart displaying the distribution of paper machine annual production rates comparing South Africa with other T&T machines in Africa.

Figure 4 Bar chart displaying the distribution of paper cash cost to the reel comparing South Africa with other T&T machines in Africa.

Figure 5 Pareto chart of T&T production capacity for Africa. Note that two countries stand out with the highest production capacity: South Africa and Egypt.

Figure 6 Pie chart displaying the % of tissue machine dispersion by country. Note that more than one half of the machines in Africa are located in South Africa (34%) and Egypt (29%). .

Figure 7 Bubble chart comparing by-country production capacity to machine technical age with bubble size representing the number of machines making up the country production.

Figure 8 Map of Africa locating paper machine producing cities. Note: Integrated (squares) and paper-only (circles) mills are differentiated on the map.

Figure 9 Map zoom highlighting South Africa