Latest Publications

South Africa has 327 operational abattoirs — down from a post-deregulation peak of around 500. The closures have been disproportionately rural. Only 15 facilities are approved to export to Saudi Arabia. The cold chain consequence is a geographic dead zone that makes FMD regionalisation structurally impossible where the livestock actually is. Read the Full Article "Slaughtered by Red Tape: South Africa’s Abattoir Decline and the Cold Chain Dead Zones It Left Behind"

South Africa exports beef to the Middle East and Asia but imports billions in poultry. The cold chain infrastructure gap — at abattoir, traceability, and biosecurity level — is the real constraint holding back export growth. Read the Full Article "SA Meat Cold Chain: Why the Country Imports What It Could Export"

South Africa’s FMD vaccine rollout exposed systemic cold chain failures at provincial level. What went wrong, what the law requires, and what cold chain operators can learn from the worst animal health crisis in a generation. Read the Full Article "The FMD Cold Chain Failure: What SA’s Vaccine Rollout Revealed About Last-Mile Cold Logistics"

South Africa is watching one crocodile — the April fuel price shock. Nobody is looking at the rest of the river. Behind the Fuel Crocodile, five more are moving toward the same bank simultaneously: the Food Crocodile (FMD, African swine fever, avian flu), the Energy Crocodile (structural refining collapse, two-week reserves, Eskom), the Money Crocodile (SARB reversal, investment freeze, the small operator trap), the People Crocodile (demand destruction, skilled workforce attrition, the school feeding programme), and the Silence Crocodile (the measurable gap between what the evidence shows and what official communications say). Cold chain sits at the intersection of every one of them. This analysis names all six — with confirmed data, sourced evidence, and a clear picture of what operators must do before 1 April. Read the Full Article "A River Full of Crocodiles: South Africa’s Converging System Crisis and the Cold Chain at the Centre of It"

The Strait of Hormuz has effectively closed. Brent crude has doubled since January. South Africa’s April diesel price is tracking a R5.66/litre under-recovery with 15 trading days still to run. This article maps the transmission path from geopolitical conflict to cold chain operating cost — and what operators should be doing right now. Read the Full Article "Middle East Crisis: What the Fuel Shock Means for South Africa’s Cold Chain"

Three recent studies reveal a seductive trap: South Africa’s cold chain industry is racing to adopt AI while the fundamental infrastructure it depends on remains broken. Here’s why getting the sequence wrong will cost us — and what actually needs to happen first. Read the Full Article "AI Won’t Save South Africa’s Cold Chain. Infrastructure Will."

CoGTA confirmed the deficit: 1,751 EHPs employed nationally against a requirement of over 6,200. Universities keep graduating them. Municipalities can’t afford to hire them. Meanwhile, 22 children died from contaminated spaza shop food in a single quarter. The cold chain compliance system depends on practitioners who exist but have no posts to fill. Read the Full Article "South Africa Needs 4,450 More Food Safety Practitioners — And Thousands of Trained Ones Can’t Find Work"

Rail reform, export surges, and climate transition are all converging on South Africa’s cold chain — but the workforce to operate it doesn’t exist, and policy frameworks can’t see it. Seven demand shocks, one blind spot, and the question nobody’s asking: who runs the cold chain of 2030? Read the Full Article "Cold Chain Workforce Crisis: South Africa’s Invisible Skills Gap"

When Africa’s most influential green economy investors gather in Cape Town this February, cold chain — the infrastructure connecting renewable energy to food preservation, sustainable agriculture to reduced waste, and green transport to perishable goods — does not appear as a standalone investment category. This structural blind spot explains why the continent’s sustainability investments consistently underdeliver on food security, health, and economic promises. With $92 billion in annual post-harvest losses and five proven investment archetypes ready for deployment, the question is whether AGES 2026 will give cold chain its own seat at the table. Read the Full Article "The Missing Link at AGES 2026: Why Africa’s Green Economy Can’t Scale Without Cold Chain Investment"