Limpopo Business 2017-18 edition

SPECIAL FEATURE
The Great North Road
passes through Limpopo
from the south to the border
town of Musina and on
to Zimbabwe and its neighbours
in the Southern African
Development Community.
The busy N11 highway links
the province to Botswana to
the west and Mpumalanga
Province to the east.
Most of South Africa's logistics
operators have a presence
in the provincial capital
city of Polokwane and freight
logistics hubs have been
established at that city and
at Musina.
Limpopo covers about 10% of South Africa's
land mass and is home to about 10% of the country's
population (5.4-million). The main languages
of the people of Limpopo are Sesotho, Xitsonga
and Tshivenda but English is widely used in
business and government.
Transport within the city of Polokwane is being
transformed by the introduction of a bus
rapid transport system, Leeto la Polokwane. In
the province as a whole, 22.6% of households in
Limpopo use bus transport and 45.8% use taxis.
Great North Transport falls under the
Limpopo Economic Development Agency.
The company has more than 500 buses,
covers about 36-million kilometres every
year on 279 routes, employs more than
1 200 people and transports 37.6-million
passengers.
The Polokwane International Airport (PIA) is
wholly owned by the provincial government
and run by the Gateway Airport Authority
Ltd (GAAL), an agency of the Department of
Roads and Transport. It has the potential to
be an important regional cargo airport. SA
Airlink offers 21 flights to Johannesburg six
days a week. The airline also provides links
between Phalaborwa and Johannesburg,
and between Hoedspruit and Johannesburg
and Cape Town.
The province also has a sophisticated rail network
which Transnet Freight Rail aims to further
expand, primarily to haul the province’s vast reserves
of coal away to the coast at Richards Bay.
Special Economic Zones
One of the ways in which Limpopo is leveraging its
strategic location is through the establishment of the
Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone. Recently
promulgated by national government, the SEZ will
have among its core functions the clustering of logistics
operations. Located in the Vhembe District in
the far north, this SEZ is near the border of Zimbabwe
and on the Great North Road, thus linking with the
broader Trans-Limpopo Spatial Development Initiative.
Other focus sectors are agri-processing, energy
and mineral beneficiation. Exxaro and De Beers have
large mining operations nearby. A consortium of
Chinese investors, Sino, has agreed to put R40-billion
into the Musina-Makhado SEZ to run the mineral
beneficiation operations.
A second application for an SEZ has been made
within the province’s platinum belt in the east of
the province. The Tubatse SEZ, in the Sekhukhune
District Municipality, will focus on the beneficiation
of platinum group metals (PGMs) and mining-related
manufacturing.
LIMPOPO BUSINESS 2017/18
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