I started in investment promotion around 8 years ago, working for a company called GreenCape. The idea was that GreenCape collaborated with Wesgro to promote investment into the green economy in the Western Cape in particular at that time. Wesgro is the official tourism trade and investment partner for the region, and GreenCape is the thought leader in the green economy. There was a natural desire for the two companies to collaborate, but it was also an example of best practice of investment promotion in a somewhat technical environment or climate.
Currently I’m employed by the Atlantis Special Economic Zone as the executive for business development. We are an entity responsible for attracting investment in the green economy, in particular in the manufacturing space. We aim to promote sustainable manufacturing by providing the greenest infrastructure and platforms available to manufacturers, but, at the same time, helping manufacturers achieve their sustainability goals through implementation of technology into their processes, into their buildings and into their connected infrastructure.
We’re effectively a very new SEZ, and we are very rapidly approaching conclusion on our civil infrastructure deployment in Phase 1 of our project, which comprises three large portions of land, and we’ve broken that up into phases. Phase 1 we call Zone 1, and we’re very close to concluding that. We’ve also secured our first factory to be built on that zone. Another notable achievement or something we’re very excited about is the fact that we acquired a factory on ACZ land, which was previously tenanted by a green economy manufacturer, and we have subsequently tenanted that facility with a manufacturer looking to achieve some of their sustainability goals as they produce a product destined for the United Nations.
I think from an economic development perspective, SEZs can be utilised as very important tools to promote growth; manufacturing and jobs are synonymous with each other. And I think SEZs deployed correctly and operated correctly in that they attract manufacturing investment, are incredibly important for the development of South Africa’s economy.
Some of the challenges we face as SEZs are the ability to correctly message the incentives which are applicable to SEZs. That’s one example of a challenge that we face. So it’s more around being accurate and having communications filter seamlessly from the various spheres of government to the tenants. From a power supply perspective, it’s interesting in that Atlantis as a whole doesn’t have too many power supply issues, but SEZs on a national scale probably do and are probably much more impacted by loadshedding than Atlantis Special Economic Zone is. Fortunately, we are finding that power supply is currently a little bit more stable in that we haven’t had loadshedding since March of this year. So again, I think the challenges are largely around communication across all three spheres of government. They do work well together, they collaborate well together, but getting that communication out to the investment community is seemingly the largest challenge at present.
I think South Africa is saying the right things globally in terms of its ambitions to decarbonise specifically the energy sector by reducing the amount of coal-fired power stations, for example. Decommissioning coal-fired power stations is absolutely a step in the right direction from the perspective of trying to grow and make our economy greener. SEZs like ours and eco-industrial parks, which are also housed within the DTIC’s Eco-Industrial Park Programme, those are all very good interventions in greening the economy. You are shifting directly from a typical industrial property development to something that is a little bit more eco-friendly or sustainable and aligned to some of the global SDGs, which then provides a natural shift to a greener economy.
At Atlantis SEZ, we not only attract the green technology manufacturers, and an example of such a manufacturer would be somebody manufacturing electric vehicles or electric scooters or anything in the emobility space, but we also deploy these electric vehicle chargers, for example. So, we’re trying to create a hub whereby the manufacturer is attracted to our region, they benefit from our development that we provide them, but at the same time, also allowing for the employees of those various developments to arrive in Atlantis in their electric vehicles, be able to charge their electric vehicle or emobility solution, whatever they’re using, whether it be an ebike or -scooter, etc., and then be comfortable in knowing that they have the ability to provide greener electrons into their green mobility solution.
In addition, we’re working very closely with the city, which is connected to Atlantis with the MyCiTi bus route, which presents another opportunity for the city to provide greener transport to the Atlantis Special Economic Zone workers or tenants occupying the area.
My vision in particular for the green economy is to be inclusive by way of its definition. So socially inclusive: the reason the SEZ exists in Atlantis is really to increase the livelihoods of people living in that area. The multiple opportunities that exist in the green economy space lend to the establishment of new factories and new developments, and these ultimately result in the creation of these wonderful job cyncs, which again are desperately required in the Atlantis region specifically. So, I guess my vision is for what we aim to build in South Africa by way of green economic interventions or developments that these should result in uplifting people’s lives.
Yes, I was invited to join the advisory board of the upcoming Africa’s Green Economy Summit. I think an event like this is incredibly important for multiple reasons. But one specific reason is we deal with a multitude of prospective tenants or manufacturers that we aim to build for. And many of these manufacturers have a dearth of capital, for example. They require capital to invest into plant equipment and machinery before we can go out and build them a top structure. And I think a platform like AGES, a summit that brings global capital and identifies African opportunities, is key for us to be able to unlock finance for some of these tenants seeking finance to make their projects more bankable.
AGES is very impactful in that they bring this global capital to African opportunities. The Atlantis Special Economic Zone being located in Africa and trying to source tenants who are able to deliver on the green economy goals of the country, but often unable to access capital to do so, I think AGES is potentially incredibly impactful in that space because they crowd in a bunch of A, investment opportunities and B, investors which can be aligned to said opportunities.
I think, generally speaking, platforms like AGES and others out there are wonderful ways in getting the right people together in a room. In this specific case, we’re looking at matching the capital opportunities with the capital. I think if we continue on this trajectory of inviting both the capital providers and the potential projects into rooms, the more they see each other, the more they’re exposed to each other, the more they understand each other, the easier it will become to deploy said capital into the market, growing ultimately the green economy for South Africa and Africa.
Catch Jarrod Lyons at Africa’s Green Economy Summit in February 2025
Contact Us
VUKA is the trusted media partner to key professionals, policy makers, suppliers and
manufacturers. We provide unparalleled opportunities for industry-wide connection.
