2024 marks the fifth year that Team Sweden, through its Business Climate Survey, has gathered information from Swedish subsidiaries in South Africa to enable a more informed understanding of the local commercial environment. This survey exemplifies the pertinent issues influencing trade of goods and services between Sweden and South Africa.
Sweden has an active business community in South Africa with a presence of about 50 registered subsidiaries. These subsidiaries represent Swedish brands in the market through partners, third-party distributors, and some of them use South African produced components in their manufacturing.
Sweden is already well-known, so Swedish businesses in South Africa usually don’t need to spend time explaining Sweden, which is an advantage in itself. This is especially true when it comes to Sweden’s reputation as having a tradition of innovation, research, and strong companies.
For years, for most, the focus of the business was pure profit. This was business as usual. Then the triple bottom line became trendy: people, profits, planet. In South Africa, planning for the social aspects of a business’s operations is increasingly becoming more mainstream.
Please download the report to fully overview the results with a detailed analysis.
ABOUT THE SURVEY
The Business Climate Survey in based entirely on the responses Swedish companies shared on the economic outlook, market, local success factors and sustainable business practices of South Africa. The report provides insight into how Swedish companies plan on expanding their local business operations from short to medium term and highlights their success factors in the South African market and the sustainable business practices they’ve implemented.
The survey was sent out to 50 Swedish subsidiaries in South Africa, and it yielded a 70 per cent response rate. Due to the global nature of the subsidiaries, the sizes vary between small, medium, and large companies.
We hope that this survey gives an overview of the perception of international companies operating in South Africa. As “Team Sweden” in the region, we are constantly looking for new avenues of collaboration and growth, focusing on sustainability, technology, and innovation.
