Johannesburg cleans up its act
SOUTH Africa may be losing ground in mining, manufacturing and is near the bottom of the pile when it comes to labour relations, but Johannesburg shines when it comes to laundry care.
Once the gold standard for mining, Johannesburg can now take pride in being the 10th “most important” city when it comes to laundry care products by 2025, according to a report by McKinsey. The city might still trail Sao Paulo, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, but Johannesburg is spinning as fast as it can to catch up.
While the report isn’t new — it was released last year — it is this honour that has attracted the likes of Ariel, which is owned by American mega-detergent company Proctor & Gamble, to launch its own washing powder and laundry-care products in South Africa earlier this year.
This suggests the city of gold could be set for a messy battle between Ariel and incumbents like Unilever, which owns Skip.
Euromonitor says Unilever accounted for 58% of South Africa’s laundry-care market last year. The company’s economy brand, Sunlight, has a strong history in the country and accounts for 89% of bar detergents. It is second in wash detergents with a 20% share. Its mid-priced brand, Omo, ranked second overall in laundry care with a 19% share of the market.
This intriguing detail was part of a wider report into consumer growth which, besides examining laundrycare products, also ranked hot spots for the elderly, higherincome consumers and young entry-level consumers, among other areas.
Where Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo are growth areas when it comes to the elderly and higher-income consumers, it is Lagos in Nigeria, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Dhaka in Bangladesh that top the bill for young entry-level consumers.
McKinsey expects 20 megacities to generate almost $6-trillion (about R62trillion) of GDP growth by 2025: that is about 7.6% annual compound rate and far outpaces the 4% rate anticipated for the global economy. Six megacities will be in China and three are in India. The only megacity in Africa is expected to be Lagos.
Political analyst Daniel Silke said the survey points to a new world of middleclass entrants with disposable income now positioned in countries and regions of the world that have largely been historically ignored “and better-known cities need to understand that they won’t be the only player in town”.