SA's first black-owned wine logistics company announced

Thursday, 5 April, 2007
Wavuka PowerPack
Paarl-based logistics company Tri-Trade Consolidated Freight and niche BEE investment company Wavuka PowerPack have announced a BEE transaction to create South Africa's first sizeable black-owned specialist wine logistics company.

In a BEE transaction effective 1 March 2007, majority shareholding in Tri-Trade has been acquired by Wavuka PowerPack and a Tri-Trade employee trust. Tri-Trade is an established specialist wine logistics company based in Paarl, collecting wine from Western Cape producers and delivering to wholesale and retail outlets countrywide.

Founded in 2000 by brothers Ian and Jaco Jacobs, Tri-Trade today serves a blue-chip client base which includes South Africa’s leading wine producers. With a management and staff complement of eleven and a seven-vehicle fleet, the company handles logistics and wine delivery nationwide for clients such as Distinctive Choice, Makro, Groundworks (wine producer for Woolworths), KWV and Van Loveren.

Tri-Trade CEO Ian Jacobs says: "We are excited to be leading the field in BEE in wine logistics. With this transaction Tri-Trade has become, to our knowledge, the first and currently the only sizeable black-owned supplier of wine logistics services in the country."

Wavuka PowerPack, which has acquired a 45% stake in Tri-Trade, is a broad-based black-owned investment company focused on companies supplying the SA wine industry. Wavuka is building a strong group of BEE companies in the SA wine industry supply chain by investing in selected existing white-owned businesses which supply the wine industry with packaging materials – bottles, closures, labels, cartons, dividers, pallets – as well as other key products and services – laboratory analyses, barrels, tanks, bottling, and logistics.

Tri-Trade employees have become co-owners of the business through an employee trust which holds a 6% stake in the company.

"We see tremendous scope for growing our business further from this solid base together with our new partners," says Jacobs from the company’s offices in Paarl. "We are gearing ourselves to handle significant increases in volume, with new vehicles being added to the Tri-Trade fleet. We have also set up a new Gauteng office, headed up by a black person with many years’ experience in freight and logistics."

Wavuka CEO Victor van Aswegen comments: "Tri-Trade is an established and trusted supplier of logistics services to the wine industry. With this transaction Tri-Trade’s dynamic management has clearly signaled its commitment to participating in the transformation of ownership structures in the wine industry supply chain. At Wavuka we look forward very much to working with Ian and his team to build this newly black-owned business into a major force in wine logistics in the not too distant future."

For more information about Tri-Trade, contact Ian Jacobs on (021) 872-3995, 082 372 7057 or ian@tri-trade.co.za. For more information about Wavuka, visit www.wpgroup.co.za or contact Victor van Aswegen on 082 552 7063 or victor@wpgroup.co.za.