JSE-listed packaging firm, Astrapak, on Monday said the recent spate of electricity outages and load shedding in South Africa had been seriously disruptive to its manufacturing businesses, presenting it with practical headaches on its production lines.

It said electricity disruptions had already resulted in irrecoverable downtime costs of more than R2million($171.720) and have an added consequence of negating some of the benefit of the energy saving initiatives.

However, the group said it is currently in the final phase of its planned two-year recovery and continues to comfortably fund its restructuring initiatives internally. It added that good headway continued to be made with executive strategic interventions and other group-wide business improvement imperatives.

“A rigorous approach is being taken to weed out underperformance and any areas of non-compliance,” it said. “As previously communicated, this tidying up is accompanied by inevitable additional costs. Only four
businesses are now responsible for a major shortfall against budget”.

The remaining group businesses, in aggregate, are beginning to perform in line with management expectations for this phase of the recovery process, it said.

However, there remained a journey to travel before the company meets its optimal return aspirations within 5 years, as set out in our original recovery plan, it continued. The increased investment in shared and support services within the new structure is having its desired effects, it said.