Every Friday morning, SAfm's AMLive's radio anchor Nikiwe Bikitsha speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday's At the Coalface transcript:

Bikitsha: Durban is launching a farming project for poor blacks. Tell me about that.

Creamer: Normally one associates a big city like Durban with manufacture and services, we don't think of agriculture. They have calculated that 60 % of their municipal area is rural and peri-urban. They have this land waiting there and they have markets, so why can't they do something with the land for food-security and poverty alleviation. Now they are strategising to include agriculture and rural areas in their economic-development planning. They have set-up an agricultural forum and there will be a summit next month to try and bring people into the farming loop. A lot of that land, where about 670 000 people live, belongs to tribal communities, so they need to negotiate with those. It is land that can be unlocked for farming because it is not privately owned and they are hoping to bring small-black farmers on to the land, but where opportunity arises for bigger agri-processing, they will do that as well. They are talking about fresh-water aquaculture - fish farming - forming quite a significant part in agricultural initiative. When you look at the fresh produce that comes into Durban every day from the likes of Gauteng and Mpumalanga, there is a market. So, Durban municipality has both surplus land and underserved markets, and has decided on taking the farming initiative as a means of economic development in its 'rural' areas.

Bikitsha: From farming to transport we go. Brazil is going to be sourcing bus parts from South Africa, when is this happening?

Creamer: The whole idea of South Africa being competitive in the automotive arena is coming up again and again. We realise that South Africans are exporting complete vehicles, but now the component area is coming into the export picture increasingly as well, and that is a very important area. We have the multinational Brazilian bus company Brasa in South Africa, but that is part of the far larger Marcopolo group, which makes about 15 000 buses a year throughout the world. They came into South Africa, initially bringing in everything to South Africa and assembling buses from imported kits in Germiston and then exporting to East Africa and Southern Africa and selling in South Africa. While assembling, the Brazilians suddenly discovered that there are a lot of South African products that are not only very good cost wise, but also very good quality wise - among them auto glass, aluminium components and specialised rubber components - so they decided to negotiate not only to use these very competitive components in South Africa, but also to use them for Marcopolo's buses right around the world. Brazil is now wanting to import these products from South Africa and use them not only in Brazil, but also in the likes of Colombia and Mexico.

Bikitsha: So our bus parts are going to Brazil, but the Russians are coming here for a slice of our taxi-fleet business.

Creamer: I'm sure if we said a few years ago that the Russians were coming, everybody would have hidden underneath their beds in fear, but now the Russians come with a business bent and they are looking at opportunities relating to our taxi-fleet and its recapitalisation. The Russian company in question is GAZ and the taxis they are creating are GAZelles. They already have 70 roaming around South Africa, but they are, of course, looking at the new taxi re-equiping programme and they have created a 16-seater right-hand drive mini-bus for only R180 000 each, all seats with safety-belts. It looks quite cost-competitive, but when you look at the structure of the company, you see that the Russians aren't even the majority of this company. They own only 42 % and the South Africans will own 58 %. And when you start looking further at that South African 58 %, you see that 26 % of those shares are held by the South African National Taxi Council and realise that the Russians have teamed up with some very significant partners, besides McCarthy, and they are hoping to get about 12 % of the taxi market - some 10 000 new taxis are bought a year - and then go towards 20 % eventually, using the GAZelle as an inroad, and then GAZ South Africa, which is set-up in Midrand, introducing additional products later.

Bikitsha: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he'll be back with us at the same time next week.

Click here to hear original audio