Wanted: Chinese solar geysers

Cape Town - In spite of Chinese importers aggressively entering the South African market for solar water-heating systems, the domestic solar geyser industry wants to see the current 15% import duty on these geysers to be abolished.

Dylan Tudor Jones, chairman of the solar water-heater division of the Sustainable Energy Society of South Africa (Sessa), said local production of solar geysers is still taking place on a very small scale and, until the local industry develops sufficiently to justify an automated manufacturing plant, it is necessary to rely on imports.

Tudor Jones is unconcerned about the apparent influx of cheap solar geysers from China. In his view the requirements imposed by the South African Bureau of Standards serve as a barrier to some of these products.

In the renewable energy display at last week's Solar World Congress in Sandton, 16 of the 60-odd exhibitors were Chinese.

Some of these used the exhibition as their first entry into the South African market, offering solar geysers ranging in price from about $160 (R1 170) to $199 (R1 455).

Together with import duty and shipping costs the $160 solar geyser will cost about $250 (R1 830), said one of the Chinese importers. This is much more affordable than the current prices that consumers have to pay for a locally manufactured or imported solar geyser from Israel, the United States or Europe, even taking into account the Eskom subsidy.

But Helmut Hertzog, managing director of the local manufacturing company Atlanticsolar, says abolishing import duties would be unfair to an established solar geyser company like his, which has been in business for 25 years.

- Sake24.com

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