Mpumalanga Company Heads to Cote d’Ivoire In Search Of Export Market

A Mbombela-based manufacturing company, Dryers for Africa’s plans to expand their business in sub-Saharan Africa will receive a major boost when they  participates in the Outward Trade and Investment Mission (OTIM) to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, scheduled to take place from 18-22 November 2019. The company’s General Director, Ms Catherine de Villiers-Burgers will be one of the businesspeople who will be part of the mission which is organised and funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) through its Export Marketing and Investment Assistance Scheme.

The primary objective of the mission is to profile and market South African expertise and capabilities to an important and strategic Francophone country such as Cote d’Ivoire, in an effort to advance the levels of intra-Africa trade and investment.

“Our trip to Côte d’Ivoire will be a fact-finding exercise with the aim of identifying distribution channels that we can exploit to export our dryers and processing equipment to the country. The mission will give us an opportunity to showcase models of the material that we use to the industry representatives to allow them to get the look and feel of our capabilities. This approach will make it more attractive for local agents to stock our products and distribute them to service the new demand,” says Villiers-Burgers.

Dryers for Africa has been in operation for twenty-years specialising in the design and manufacturing of agricultural processing equipment for commercial and small-scale farmers. The products are already exported to Burkina Faso, eSwatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Republic of Chad, Senegal and Togo. The company, which employs seventeen people, was also part of the Outward Trade and Investment Mission to Ghana that took place in March.

According to the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Fikile Majola, the OTIM is aligned to the dti’s strategic priority of supporting missions which contribute to higher levels of value added exports, facilitate transformation of the economy, intensify industrial development, enhance investment and enable market integration between South Africa and the rest of the African continent.

The planned programme for the weeklong mission will comprise of trade and investment seminar, targeted business-to-business meetings, site visits and a roundtable discussion at the African Development Bank (AfDB) headquarters.


One of the agri-dryer manufactured by Dryers for Africa at their Mbombela plant.

Enquiries:
Sidwell Medupe-Departmental Spokesperson
Tel: (012) 394 1650
Mobile: 079 492 1774
E-mail: MSMedupe@thedti.gov.za
Issued by: The Department of Trade and Industry
Follow us on Twitter: @the_dti

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