23 May 2026 When chuckles die: Absa lifts curtain on Woolies-Beyers row
Court papers lodged by Absa show the chocolatier owed the bank R235m when it collapsed – felled by a series of unfortunate events, including Woolworths axing its contract.…
There’s been a bitter ping-pong match between food juggernaut Woolworths and chocolatier Beyers over what tipped the confectionery company into liquidation.
But court papers lodged by Absa – to which Beyers owed R235m at the time of its collapse – have shed new light on the confluence of crises that brought down the 39-year-old enterprise.
“You can see the empathy that would go to a family business pitched against this big Woolies, but the reason why Beyers is going into liquidation isn’t because of us,” Woolies CEO Roy Bagattini said in an interview last week.
Yet Kees Beyers, who founded the chocolatier at the age of 20 in 1987, is equally convinced that the catalyst was Woolies’ decision to torpedo a R320m contract because he refused to stop supplying its rivals, Checkers and Pick n Pay.
Now, all may be fair in war and commerce, but ascertaining the real reason for Beyers’ demise is important – not just to determine whether this does indeed expose hypocrisy in Woolies’ commercial ethics of being a “responsible” retailer, as Beyers argues, but also for what it reveals about the fragility of small business in South Africa.
The court papers lodged in the high court in Joburg for Beyers’ liquidation, revealed here for the first time, are illuminating. In a 40-page affidavit, Absa’s investment banker, Ofentse Mareka, provides a far more nuanced take on how things went badly for Beyers with Woolies – and then, disastrously, spiralled into something far worse.
Mareka traces the problem to 2023, when “Woolworths terminated its relationship with [Beyers, which,] coupled with various other factors such as an increase in the price of cocoa and an investment in a new manufacturing plant, had a significant financial impact on the business”.
Since Beyers bought 80% of its raw material from overseas – mostly Europe – the frail rand was no help as cocoa prices rocketed more than 300% over three years from $2,400/t to $10,700/t, before tumbling back to $4,000/t now.
Mareka says that as a result, Beyers couldn’t repay its loans, and asked for a “moratorium” on its debt. Absa, to its credit, stepped up, providing another R40m overdraft and a new R10m working capital facility, hoping this would allow the chocolatier to trade its way out of trouble…..
Currency.co.za: Read the full article here
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The Woolworths-Beyers Chocolates furore
The collapse of the 34‑year Woolworths–Beyers Chocolates partnership has triggered a wave of intense public commentary, with both sides taking their case to the media in a way rarely seen in South Africa’s supplier–retailer relationships.…