BUSINESS DAY TV: Bypassing a municipality keeps company running
Gary Arnold, MD of agriculture at Astral Foods, discusses the chicken producer’s court victory against Eskom — getting the lights kept on
BUSINESS DAY TV: Astral Foods has been assured that the lights will stay on at its Standerton operation, that’s after it reached agreement with Eskom in the North Gauteng High Court last week that its power supply wouldn’t be disrupted despite the Lekwa Municipality not paying its bills. The disruption would have had devastating consequences for Astral’s operations and joining us with more is Gary Arnold, MD of agriculture at Astral. Gary, so is bypassing the Lekwa Municipality and dealing with Eskom directly the best possible outcome for you? GARY ARNOLD: In terms of the court action, we consider this a major victory against Eskom. In January of this year, Eskom threatened to cut power permanently to Lekwa Municipality if they did not pay the arrears on the outstanding electricity bill with Eskom. That was close at the time R300m. Astral has sizeable businesses in Standerton. We have investments in animal feed and poultry operations in excess of R3bn. We employ 4,150 people in thes...
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