I finally won a tennis match at Tornadoes, the Table View-based club so named for its diabolical swirling winds that rip across the exposed courts and leave visiting players flaying and cursing like King Lear. I have more than once been tempted to scrawl “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” on the cloakroom wall. But I refrained, fearing misinterpretation and a nasty diplomatic incident.
I remember one horrible match in a howling gale when my partner Ray — who has an unusually high serve toss — was being called for foot-faulting with the wind whisking the ball into the court. In frustration — standing well behind the service line — he managed to tonk two of his normally accurate first serves onto the top windows of the adjoining Virgin Active gym. One of the resounding impacts caused a lady to stumble dangerously while busy with her treadmill routine.
Last Saturday — as part of the illustrious Constantia Mixed B team — we rolled into Table View with, unbelievably, not a breath of wind rustling the surrounding scrub. In truth, a little breeze would have been welcome. The courts were steamier than the Ascendis boardroom and our opponents were harrying us like the most dogged shareholder activist. My partner, The King, is not one for blazing encounters. He was donning all sorts of “iced” bandanas and issuing a stream of expletives — so much so that at one point I thought I was partnering a portly Axl Rose. Our young(er) opponents had a field day posting us to all corners of the court. When they broke The King’s serve for a 5-3 lead, I thought we were well and truly cooked. But old hands always know that the best place to fight sweltering encounters is in the comforting cool of the gutter …
Once we had burgled the first set in a tie-break, it took our stunned opponents five games to find traction in the second set — way too late for comeback heroics.
The R965m deal with Terrasan is a substantial one for Sea Harvest, which has a market value of less than R2.7bn
Speaking of tricky encounters, enduring empowerment investment company Brimstone has a lot on its plate with its overweight position in the fishing sector. The group holds a 25.04% stake in Oceana, one of the biggest fishing companies in the world, as well as a controlling stake in Sea Harvest, which is best known for its frozen hake cutlets.
The stake in Sea Harvest is set to dilute markedly, from 57.8% to about 47.5%, after a decision to buy the Saldanha pelagic fishing business and the Aqunion abalone farming venture from unlisted empowerment group Terrasan for about R965m. This is a substantial deal for Sea Harvest, which has a market value of less than R2.7bn.
Sea Harvest will fund the bulk of the transaction by issuing new shares at R10 each to Terrasan — keeping Sea Harvest’s BEE credentials intact. The mature abalone business, which sells about 540t a year from two farms, will add bulk (and profit) to Sea Harvest’s existing abalone interests.
The Saldanha pelagic business is another kettle of fish — and could be transformative for Sea Harvest in its bid to diversify away from its hake core. Saldanha catches sardines and anchovies, which are processed through subsidiary West Point Processors for export as fish oil and fishmeal as well as canned fish (under the Saldanha brand). Saldanha holds 11.51% of the total allowable catch (TAC) of anchovy and 5.05% of the TAC for pilchard (both recently renewed for 15 years).
Sea Harvest, on the other hand, holds only 0.6% of the TAC for anchovy and 2.7% of the TAC for pilchard. So, the Saldanha acquisition means Sea Harvest can leverage its own limited quota into higher-value products. Of course, the niggling issue here is that this development brings Sea Harvest into direct competition with Brimstone’s other fishing investment, Oceana, which earns the bulk of its keep from fish oil and fishmeal as well as its powerful canned pilchard brand Lucky Star.
Though Brimstone technically loses control of Sea Harvest, the empowerment group retains significant influence over two of South Africa’s largest fishing enterprises.
With Sea Harvest and Oceana likely to go at it hammer and tongs in the fish canning and fish oil/fishmeal segments, would Brimstone consider angling for just one seafood venture? Goodness knows, selling off either all or part of either Sea Harvest or Oceana would help cast off the debt that is currently precluding Brimstone chasing down sizeable new investment opportunities with vigour. Tough one to contemplate, since both Oceana and Sea Harvest provide solid value underpins and dividends.
Some believe Brimstone could even play a role in merging the two businesses into an African fishing champion; I’d think that unlikely. But equally unlikely is Brimstone expediently culling its debt by selling its array of smaller investments, which include private education, property and health care.
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