Power outages disrupt production in South Africa

British American Tobacco is losing as much as 10 percent of its South African output due to power cuts, according to a Reuters story.

South Africa is said to be in the middle of its worst electricity crisis since 2008; so private and business customers suffer frequent controlled blackouts, which state utility Eskom implements to prevent the grid from collapsing.

Arturo Rodriguez, head of BAT’s South African unit, said that despite having back up diesel-powered generators to run the factory, the unpredictable timing and duration of the outages had resulted in between five percent and 10 percent output losses at its Heidelberg plant.