UK-based global consumer healthcare company Haleon is investing R500-million in its South African operation, Haleon South Africa Cape Town site director Cindy Carter highlighted in a media briefing on Thursday. Haleon South Africa produced some of the best-known consumer health products in the country, including Grand Pa headache powders, and was a Level 4 broad-based black economic empowerment company.

She reported that the South African operation was moving to adopt recyclable plastics, for example for packaging, as part of its policy of environmental responsibility. And it was installing solar power at its Cape Town plant, to reduce dependence on Eskom power, which was largely generated using “dirty” sources (that is, coal), to reduce Haleon’s carbon footprint.

The Cape Town plant operated on a 24/7 basis, and would continue to do so during its upgrades. These would include the introduction of new products.

The main address at the briefing was given by Haleon South Africa’s new GM, Farhan Haroon, who arrived in the country only two weeks ago. He pointed out that the Haleon Group was the biggest self-care products company in the world, and that Haleon South Africa was the biggest such company in the country. He cited its production of Grand Pa pouches, running at one-billion a year. It is one of the biggest such production facilities in the world, and the biggest in the Haleon Group.

He distinguished between self-care and self-medication. Self-care was about preventing illness, or reacting immediately to symptoms of illness, while self-medication applied after the illness had taken hold (although some of its products can be used for self-medication). “Self-care is taking care of your own health,” he summed up.

South Africa was one of the group’s biggest markets (and it operated in 170 markets) and 85% of the products it sold in the country were locally-made. “We’re very proud of that,” he affirmed. The group is going to transfer the latest production technology to South Africa.

But the local healthcare product manufacturing sector (not just Haleon) did not always get the support it should from the South African government, he cautioned. The State had recently placed a big order with an overseas company, which manufactured overseas, for a medication that was already being made in South Africa. Why import something when it was available locally, he queried.  

Haleon South Africa was itself an exporter, Carter stressed. It currently exported to 13 export markets, not just in Africa but also in Europe and Australasia. And it was in the process of optimising its network strategy, in cooperation with logistics and supply chain group DB Schenker, to expand into more African markets. From next year it would expand into the whole of Southern Africa, and by 2027 it should be expanding into the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.   

Other Haleon products that were well-known in South Africa included (but were not limited to) Eno, Med-Lemon, Aquafresh, Sensodyne, Calpol and Centrum.