Booze sales topped up as job sorrows deepen

VODACOM is in talks with Naspers to deliver movies and TV programmes to mobile devices as part of a search for new income from data consumers. The deal would also give Naspers’s pay-TV business a new distribution platform. WINE and spirits maker Distell’s annual sales growth by volume more than doubled as price cuts offset flagging demand in its home market. Sales volume in South Africa rose 6.7% in the year to June from 2.6% a year earlier. SOUTH Africa saved R4-billion in fuel and by avoiding blackouts in the first half of 2015 due to renewable energy projects, according to a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research study, compared with an R800-million saving in 2014. THE Department of Water and Sanitation granted approval for the release of water from the Lesotho Highlands Water Project to boost supplies to dams in the Free State. Dam levels are very low because of below-normal rainfall. ABOUT 60 000 jobs could be lost this year, according to Solidarity, which said more than 45 000 jobs were at risk at 58 companies. The union said 163 more companies were currently cutting staff or considering job cuts, which could affect another 16 500 jobs. CLOSING South Africa’s 6 000 ownerless and derelict mines and draining polluted water from them could cost almost R60-billion, according to a Department of Mineral Resources and Council for Geoscience study. TELKOM ended talks with MTN after the Competition Commission, objecting to a deal that would give MTN greater access to Telkom’s network, said it would ask the Competition Tribunal to bar the deal. THE Chamber of Mines declared a dispute with Solidarity over failed wage talks, referring the matter to a mediator. Solidarity accepted the deal, but the offer depended on all unions signing it, said the chamber.