Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau visited Bell Equipment and Mondi South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal on 9 October 2026 to discuss investment, localisation and support for local manufacturers, Moneyweb reports. Both companies used the visits to raise the pressure they face from imports, and the minister said government would respond through established trade remedy processes. No new incentive was announced.
A sector in decline
The visits came a day after Statistics South Africa reported that manufacturing output fell 4.3% year on year in August. Moneyweb says production contracted 1.7% in the first eight months of 2026, following a 1.3% decline in 2025.
Tau’s remarks were blunt. “We must be honest about the state of manufacturing in our country,” he said. “The sector has been in decline, and too many factories have been forced to cut capacity in the face of cheap imports.” The visits were facilitated by the Zululand Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Bell Equipment
Bell Equipment, a heavy-machinery maker serving construction, mining, agriculture and forestry, employs more than 3 000 people directly and buys from more than 900 local suppliers. Moneyweb says that over the past decade it has generated R60 billion in export revenue and spent R40 billion on local purchases.
The company told the minister it plans to expand its manufacturing, double its workforce and deepen localisation, meaning a larger share of the components it uses is made in South Africa. It is asking government for support, including extending the incentives under the automotive production and development programme to its motor grader. Moneyweb does not say how large the incentive would be or what the programme’s rules would require, and it does not report a government response on that request.
Mondi South Africa
At Mondi, import competition was the central concern. According to Moneyweb, imports of bleached pulp, containerboard and uncoated fine paper nearly doubled from about 105 500 tonnes in 2023 to almost 210 000 tonnes in 2025, and imports in the first half of 2026 were 19% higher than in the same period a year earlier. These are the figures Mondi presented during the visit, as reported by Moneyweb. The report does not name the countries the imports come from.
Mondi has approved R14 billion of investment since it pledged R8 billion at the 2018 South Africa Investment Conference, Moneyweb says. Its R3 billion Project Vuselela biomass boiler at Richards Bay is expected to be commissioned in June 2027. Moneyweb describes Mondi South Africa as a global leader in sustainable packaging and paper.
What trade remedies involve
Tau said government will address industry concerns through established trade remedy processes and work with manufacturers on available support. Trade remedies are measures such as anti-dumping duties, which are extra duties on imports sold below a fair price. In South Africa these are handled by the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC).
ITAC’s own notice on a 2024 steel case shows how a case runs. An investigation begins when the commission gazettes a notice, in that case on an application from a local producer. ITAC then makes a preliminary determination on whether dumping is happening and whether it is causing material injury to the local industry. Where it finds that a delay would cause further injury, it can ask the South African Revenue Service to impose provisional duties while the investigation continues. In that case the duties ran for six months, from 29 November 2024 to 28 May 2025, and the commission invited comment on its preliminary report before the investigation closed.
Moneyweb’s report does not say whether Bell or Mondi has applied for any trade remedy, or when any new support might be decided. It says only that the visits highlight the challenge facing policymakers as they try to sustain industrial investment, employment and exports while local producers face falling output and growing import competition.
Sources: Moneyweb, Statistics South Africa, ITAC.
