Empowerment group liquidated  24 April 2008

Reinvest’s Lindiwe Wines owe millions

It was punted, when launched some ten years ago, as the vehicle for black and workers’ empowerment. Now the Reinvest group has been liquidated in the Cape High Court and Lindiwe Wines (the upbeat name means ‘the one we have been waiting for’), which appeared on the market in 2003, is no more.

Reinvest has been unable to meet debts, the major ones being the National Empowerment Fund (NEF), to which it owes R3.7 million, and KWV, which had provided R1 million worth of wine to the label.

The application for liquidation was brought by a director Henry Petersen, who claimed to be owed an amount in salary arrears. Nosey Pieterse, chair of the Black Association of Wine and Spirit Industry (Bawsi), and executive chair of Reinvest, also has a salary claim. Reinvest was founded by Pieterse  in 1998 to advance workers’ empowerment and was supposed to contribute 20 percent of its annual profit to Bawsi.

COMMENT

From Nosey spectator:
Mr Pieterse should hopefully realize by now that it is maybe time to move on to some other industry which is not as tough as the wine industry. It would be sad because he obviously has many good friends in the industry and really knows how to run a ship and is totally committed to the wine industry.