Illovo Sugar Africa with domestic markets across our African countries is seeing the fruits of an extraordinary journey of commercial muscle building, evidenced today by vibrant local marketplaces for our quality and branded sugar products. At its heart, the commercial transformation over the past seven years has been focussed on a strategy to deliver sustainable and profitable volume growth for the business at the same time as becoming a truly consumer-focused organisation – providing trusted quality and affordable products to reach our consumers and customers across local markets.
Today, as a planned outcome of this deliberate intention, more than 80% of Illovo’s total annual sugar production is sold locally in the countries where we operate while the balance is exported to neighbouring African countries, with a relatively and much smaller portion now sold to international customers.
Tracking back, the commercial journey to date has been defined by Illovo’s own customised initiative to “Unlock Growth” in the business supported by our “Seven Commercial Imperatives” and launched across the Group to drive adoption. At the core, and in our consumer-facing marketplaces in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania & Zambia, properly serving our consumers has meant making sure that our products are affordable & available, and thus accessible.
“I’m particularly proud now of Illovo’s strong Route to Consumer (RtC) development and the revenue growth capabilities that have come with it. Among this and many others, the two other highlights that come to mind are the creation and execution of our small format prepack strategy which from inception until the end of June 2024, has seen us selling 426 million units across our markets; together with the capability development of our commercial and marketing people, which is really close to my heart. Combined, I think we can safely say that we’ve successfully delivered on our intended execution plan,” said Andre.
Developing commercial maturity is an ongoing process and given the dynamic, fast-moving and sometimes unstructured markets in which Illovo plays, it’s really up to the Group to continue adapting to local market conditions together with all of their unique challenges and opportunities. Launching Illovo’s Winning Outbound Logistics Organisation (WOLO) was one of these responses, to ensure we operate our outbound logistics function in a cost effective and customer-centric way; a second was the rolling out of the Winning Sales Organisation (WSO) training course, consisting of a series of sales “playbooks” which have become the go-to tools for customised and common sales training modules for all our sales teams.
But adaptation also needs to be accompanied by a strong people capability development agenda because, as Andre comments: “It is all about people, processes and technology with all three working in harmony to deliver superior results. From my perspective, I believe it was an unplanned but fortuitous consequence that through our clear strategy with strong imperatives, we’ve built a strong muscle of commercial capability which is fit for the business. Our CEO Gavin Dalgleish frequently likens the development of our employees’ commercial skills to a ‘capability flywheel’: When there are vacant positions, they are promptly filled by motivated team members eager to progress and enhance their careers. As they do, they create further opportunities for others in the business to progress, or attract external candidates who revere to be part of our commercial team – and so the “flywheel” spins.”
Feeding the enthusiasm to progress, the commercial division has established its own “School of Commercial” which runs formalised and ongoing development programmes to build commercial expertise and upskill our leaders to execute future thinking. Currently it runs four formal certification courses: under sales (both the Winning Sales Organisation Baseline and Pro programmes); marketing (Illovo Marketing Masterclass); logistics (WOLO Logistics and Pro); and sales and operations planning (S&OP Maturity programme). The courses are role and workplace-specific with success measures based on, among others, completion of modules with on-the-job assessments, successful implementation of projects, and so on.
All of which leads us into our 2024 commercial conference theme with Andre boldly declaring: “Strategy Realised: Confirming the plan, Bringing it to life”!
Held in June 2024, the conference brought together all of the commercial teams and leaders from across our African businesses, creating a great opportunity to reflect on the resounding success of Illovo’s commercial journey over the past seven years.
Joined at the conference by ISA CEO Gavin Dalgleish, are (from left to right): Mark Whitehead who in addition to managing his current Outbound Logistics portfolio is also providing interim support to the role of Export Sales recently vacated by Ian Parrott; Gill Du Plessis; Gavin Dalgleish and Ian Parrott, appointed Downstream Director at ISSA on 1 June 2024, together with Andre Lubbe, Hashmita Mistry and Johann Van Der Merwe.
The Group team is joined by both Commercial and Supply Chain Directors Chembe Kabandama & Richard Chipondo from Zambia Sugar; Fimbo Butallah, Commercial and Supply Chain Director at Kilombero; Hlako Rachidi Commercial and Supply Chain Director at Illovo South Africa and Maurice Njowoka Supply Chain head at Illovo Malawi.
Hard at play! Mandisa Radebe, Imraan Ramsamy, Anthony Mwakanema, Msa Kubekha, Pamela Kalamatila, Yotam Saka, Natalie Davey and far right, Fimbo Butallah.
The team were grateful to have Philip Myers, ABF Business Development Director, as the Guest Adjudicator who provided feedback on the countries’ commercial plans.
The conference was about hearing from our commercial teams on their recent performances, confirming their plans going forward and then how, supported by our Group team, they’ll be brought to life. The high-quality presentations shared by the various commercial teams were data rich and demonstrated robust plans. They focussed on the challenges and opportunities of their markets, such as achieving accessibility of product through rural penetration, aligning to the needs of their consumers and customers, and remaining relevant and competitive. From evidence provided across all teams, there was no doubt about the success of our small format prepacks which have provided accessibility of affordable, trusted quality sugar products to consumers.
A wonderful occasion bringing the whole team together to celebrate successes to date and share strategy for future commercial resilience and growth!