The 14th South African International Trade Exhibition (SAITEX) is to be held in Midrand city in Gauteng province, South Africa, from October 10-13.

SAITEX is a trade and industry exhibition, that was founded in 1993 with the objective of promoting exports and imports.

Companies active in transportation, foodstuff, clothes, home appliances, tourism, sanitary instruments, decoration, agriculture, construction and financial and commercial services will take part in the exhibition.

This year’s Saitex will be more closely geared towards small South African businesses aiming to enter the export market and will comprise pre-registration profiling to evolve a more sophisticated matchmaking process. This will help in linking up complementary companies across borders.


And to stimulate south-south trade, Brazil and India have been invited to partner SA at Saitex. This will see the two countries bringing trade and investment missions to Saitex and the hosting of workshops, which will look at all aspects of trade among the three countries.

The invitation stems from the Ibsa alliance, forged to boost trade among the three countries.


With the rand weakening considerably in recent months, opportunities for exports are becoming increasingly attractive.


Saitex will aim at coaching companies to be export ready.

“We have to grow our manufacturing sector for exports. With this year’s event, we are trying to create a nursery for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),” says Saitex business development director Pierre Potgieter.


Saitex will introduce a sector- specific exhibition aimed at attracting local manufacturers. Manufacturing SA (Mansa) will run concurrently with the main exhibition, to showcase light industrial goods, services and technologies. It will also involve SME development seminars and export workshops.

Categories covered by Mansa include the electrical, electronic, chemical and plastics sectors; commercial and business solutions; mechanical and materials handling; beneficiation and jewellery manufacturing; and safety, health and the environment.


The Mansa initiative is part of a three-pronged approach “to put relevance back on the table”, says Potgieter. A matchmaking programme has been introduced to enable the organisers to link up like-for-like companies at industry-specific meetings. The aim is to facilitate at least five top-level leads for each exhibitor, Potgieter said.


Tracey Watcham of Outsmart Marketing, responsible for the matchmaking programme, said 3900 companies had already been matched through the profiling programme.