The extent of the damage to industry and the costs that arise directly from load shedding have been gravely underestimated, the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) said on Friday.

“This is a crisis for the country and a disaster for many industries, and people in high places need to be made aware of the real consequences of the Eskom fiasco,” chamber president Janine Myburgh said in a statement.

According to a recent CCCI survey of the Parow Industria industrial area, in Cape Town, ceramic factories may have to close their doors, as kilns took up to ten hours to reach the required temperature and any interruption in the power supply caused quality problems.

Kilns had to cool down completely before they could be restarted and the loss of product, production time and the risk of further load shedding meant that it was not worth continuing to operate until there was a secure power supply.

Myburgh added that the situation in the metal industry was “even worse”. When furnaces lost power, the metal inside could solidify, causing thousands of rands worth of damage as well as the loss of two day’s production time.

The food industry had, meanwhile, also been hard hit. Ice-cream and dairy factories, operating at full capacity for the season, were losing product, while labour costs went up as they were forced to pay overtime. Ice-cream had melted and covered factory floors.

CCCI industrial focus portfolio committee chairperson Peter Haylett believed Eskom would not be able to solve its problems in the near future and the damage caused would eat into company profits, jobs and tax revenue for government.

Industry in the Cape would be particularly hard hit, as local factories would not be able to compete with rivals in Gauteng where gas from Mozambique and Sasol was available for kilns, furnaces, ovens and other process heat requirements in industry.

“Part of the answer was the rapid development of our own natural gas resources while the need to import natural gas had become urgent. We have been arguing for this for more than a decade, but our call has fallen on deaf ears and now we are paying the price,” Haylett commented.