E-commerce expansion in South Africa had led to a significant surge in courier company growth since last year’s Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns, warehousing specialist Martin Bailey told a webinar on supply chain today (*).
According to the chairman of Industrial Logistics Systems (ILS), various couriers across South Africa have grown 40-50% during the pandemic.
ILS itself, he said, was working on at least four different courier expansions at the moment.
The increasing need for independent couriers and other 3rd party logistics providers comes as e-commerce platforms like Takealot are experiencing steady demand through online shopping.
Its head of supply chain development, Jean Laubscher, told the same webinar that Takealot had grown about 150% more than what had been anticipated in 2020.
And yet South Africa’s e-commerce growth is lagging behind the rest of the world, despite courier company developments through ever-increasing online orders.
Answering a question on whether we’re behind the curve, Hennie Joubert, warehousing and 3rd party systems manager at Takealot, said there was definitely still room for growth.
“Compared to the rest of the world, especially Europe and North America, our market share of e-commerce to retail is still lagging behind.”
Laubscher put a finer point on this view, stating that e-commerce had only achieved 2.7% market share of a R1.1-trillion retail market in South Africa in 2020.
In comparison, e-commerce market share in the rest of the world was about 6.7% of total retail value for the same period.
Takealot is aiming though at increasing the country’s market share to over 3% of total market share this year, Laubscher said.
* The webinar, “Creating a world-class supply chain in a rapidly changing world”, was organised by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and hosted by the Transport Forum.
