Pretoria (SA) – The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has made significant and palpable progress with regard to drought relief interventions nationwide. DAFF went through a difficult period last year because of the drought. The continued low rainfall resulted in very dry conditions with drought being reported in all nine provinces. As a result eight provinces, excluding Gauteng, were declared a state of drought disaster.

        As part of its continued efforts to assist distressed farmers, DAFF engaged with all relevant stakeholders regarding the drought situation to find solutions to the drought disaster which the country is facing. DAFF further requested funds for drought assistance from the National Treasury through the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) in the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), following the verification of drought situation in the declared areas.

        As a result of these assessments; National Treasury made an amount of R212 million available for the financial year 2016/17 to assist affected farmers across the country. Provinces have made R198 million available through equitable share funding. These funds were utilised to assist the affected farmers. Funding from programmes such as the Prevention and Mitigation of Disaster Risk (PMDR) programme were also expended with interventions on borehole drilling and construction of fire breaks.

        DAFF management in consultation with NDMC and National Treasury took a decision to procure animal feeds on behalf of the provinces based on, but not limited to, the following reasons:

• Allocated timeframe within which the Scheme must be implemented
• To control financial mismanagement and unaccountability
• To enhance monitoring and evaluation as well as reporting

All the affected provinces are implementing the allocated R212 million as part of assistance to the affected farmers. Deliveries and distributions of feeds are almost complete in the affected provinces. DAFF is expected to continue offering much needed support to the affected farmers. – [+27 (0)12 319 6787, +27 (0)72 475 2956, MakenosiM@daff.gov.za]

Pietermaritzburg (SA) – The business rescue practitioners (BRP’S) held the first meeting of creditors in terms of the provisions of the companies act on the on the 7th November 2016.

        At this meeting the BRP’S proposed that an extension be granted for the drafting and submitting of a business rescue plan.

        The meeting voted in favour of an extension and the BRP’S are required to draft a business plan by the 13th February 2017, publish the plan by the 20th February 2017 and hold a meeting of Creditors  by no later than the 27th February 2017.

        The BRP’S have received a written offer from an interested party which will be included in a business plan and we are in the process of finalising the terms and conditions therein.

        Because of the delays in receiving the offer, the BRP’S are unable to draft and submit the business rescue plan in terms of the extension granted on the 7th November 2017 and will apply to creditors on the 27th February for an extension of time to lodge the business rescue plan.

        It is anticipated that the plan will be presented to creditors during the beginning of May 2017.

Pretoria (SA) – The Programme Approval Panel of the IDC’s Clothing & Textile Competitiveness Improvement Programme has approved the formation of a new national cluster to replace the former National Footwear & Leather Cluster, according to acting GM Ernest Heunis.

Likely to be known as the Footwear & Leather Industries Cluster (FLIC), the founding meeting and incorporation meeting will be held on February 15, at the Eddels offices in Pietermaritzburg, and will be attended by representatives of the 4 sub-national clusters who will be its founding members – the Exotic Leather Cluster, the Fast Track Cluster (aka the Foschini/Eddels cluster), the Durban Regional Cluster (the Mr Price cluster), and the Southern Cape Cluster.

“Once it has been founded, other stakeholders will be asked to join, as directors and members,” he said.

Kettering (UK) – SATRA’s Chemical and Analytical Technology group has almost doubled its turnover over the past 5 years, according to a release today. The main product sector SATRA serves are footwear, furniture, toys and personal protective equipment (PPE), and “a sizeable portion of the chemistry team’s business is testing in accordance with restricted substances legislation”, the release said.

“Within Europe, this is mainly driven by REACH (Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006) and the innocuousness requirements for PPE as part of the certification requirements through SATRA’s Notified Body activities.

“A specialist area that has seen major growth is with the assessment of industrial, examination and surgical gloves to determine their level of protection against hazardous chemicals. SATRA can test to the requirements in EN ISO 374-1:2016 so gloves can be certified against this newly published standard. This involves a new requirement to test the degradation of gloves in accordance with EN 374-4:2013 and permeation testing to EN 16523-1:2015. A new area of permeation testing for SATRA in 2016 was testing against chemotherapy drugs to ASTM D6978. Due to the very low detection limits required, SATRA is one of the few laboratories in Europe that can offer this testing service.”

All leather, footwear and leather goods exports to the EU are also subject to REACH requirements. – [http://www.satra.co.uk/]