For South Africa’s packaging, plastics, processing, printing and labelling companies, electricity is more than an overhead. The sector uses substantial energy for melting, extrusion, injection and blow moulding, vacuum thermoforming, and cooling.
Compressors, dryers, chillers and material conveyors add a significant secondary load.
Printing and labelling operations are similarly electricity-hungry.
Motor-driven equipment on printing presses, material-handling conveyors, and finishing equipment such as cutters, trimmers, binders, and labelling units can account for a large share of consumption, while thermal and gas systems handle drying and curing.
For energy-intensive manufacturing operations like these, electricity cost and availability can directly affect production economics, especially as tariffs continue to change and businesses have more options for sourcing power.
However, alternative options like installed PV solutions only cover a certain period of day-time energy consumption, based on when the system can actively produce power.
Additionally, maximising this alternative supply is often a challenge, as the factory is ultimately limited by available roof space.
The rising cost of power
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition has noted that manufacturing is particularly vulnerable to electricity interruptions and energy prices, with electricity costs representing a relatively larger share of operating costs in energy-intensive industries than in services.
Pressure has continued into 2026. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) approved an average 8.76% increase in Eskom tariffs for direct customers for the 2026/27 financial year, while the approved average increase for municipal customers is 9.01%, with the respective increases taking effect from 1 April 2026 and 1 July 2026.
For manufacturers, however, the issue is more pressing than the headline tariff.
Electricity consumption varies considerably depending on the machinery used, the material processed, production volumes, operating hours, and equipment efficiency.
Rather than assuming electricity represents a fixed percentage of manufacturing costs, businesses need to understand how much energy individual processes consume and how that consumption relates to production output.
The power problem
For many years, manufacturers’ electricity-supply question was relatively straightforward: buy electricity from the local utility and manage the resulting tariff.
That model is changing.
The South African electricity market has opened greater scope for private generation and bilateral electricity transactions.
Cape Town offers a practical example of this market’s evolution.
The City of Cape Town introduced one-to-one electricity wheeling across its network from 1 March 2025, subject to conditions including medium- or high-voltage connections and time-of-use tariffs.
The city’s current rules allow generators to be located either within or outside the municipal network.
For manufacturers, this creates more choice, but it also presents an interesting procurement dilemma.
A business needs to consider when it consumes electricity, how its existing tariff works, the structure of any wheeling or network charges, the proposed supply’s generation profile, and the contractual arrangements involved.
The importance of this
For an energy-intensive manufacturing facility, an annual or monthly electricity figure tells only part of the story.
A more useful analysis looks at when electricity is consumed, how demand changes during production, and how much load remains when production is reduced or stopped.
You can then compare that information with a proposed generation source’s output profile and the customer’s existing tariff structure.
This approach is particularly relevant for renewable energy.
The commercial value of a renewable supply depends not only on the volume of electricity generated but also on how that generation interacts with the customer’s demand and the applicable electricity and network charges.
As a result, electricity procurement increasingly becomes a question of matching supply and demand rather than simply comparing energy prices.
Let’s look at the data
For a business considering an alternative electricity supply, asking and answering the following questions is crucial:
- How much electricity does my facility consume?
- When does it consume it?
- Which production processes account for the greatest demand?
- How does consumption change between production periods and shutdowns?
- What tariff structure currently applies?
- What network, wheeling or other charges would apply to an alternative supply arrangement?
- And what proportion of electricity consumption could realistically be matched with renewable generation?
These questions are more useful than applying a generic percentage to the electricity bill.
They also highlight why energy management is becoming more closely connected to production management.
An electricity strategy cannot be separated entirely from the way a factory operates.
Changes in production schedules, machinery, operating hours and process efficiency can all affect the value of an electricity-supply arrangement.
Shifts in SA’s energy market
South African manufacturers are therefore operating in an electricity market that is becoming more diverse.
Eskom remains a major supplier, but businesses increasingly face a mix of grid electricity, private generation, power-purchase agreements, wheeling arrangements, and on-site generation.
However, the right solution depends on each facility’s load profile, tariff, operating pattern, location, contractual requirements, and risk tolerance.
For the packaging, plastics, processing, printing, and labelling industries, energy management will likely become an increasingly important part of operational decision-making.
As the industry gathers at Propak Cape 2026 from 27 to 29 October 2026 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, energy will likely be part of a wider discussion about manufacturing efficiency, resilience, and the changing economics of production.
The central question for manufacturers is ultimately a practical one: not simply how much electricity a factory uses, but how that electricity is consumed, what it costs, where it comes from and how those factors affect the competitiveness of the production process.