President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma will launch the Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) and handover the operator permit on 31 October 2013 at Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape Province.
 
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies, says the feasibility study about the Saldanha Bay IDZ has revealed that the project has an immense capacity of taking the economy of the country and the region to a higher industrial growth path.  
 
“According to the study, the project has the potential to make a contribution of 86 percent to the Gross Geographic Product and create approximately 11,975 total (direct, indirect and induced) jobs; additionally the Saldanha Bay IDZ is likely to attract foreign direct investment worth approximately R9.3 billion over 25 years.”, Davies said.
 
Davies added that the study also revealed that Saldanha Bay is strategically located to serve the large Oil & Gas sector on the African continent due to an increasing number of oil rigs requiring maintenance, and their traffic flow passing by the West Coast to the East Coast of Africa. The sectoral focus on Oil & Gas services will include Maintenance & Repair, Fabrication, Supply and other services.
 
Minister Davies highlighted that Oil and Gas sector is one of the priority sectors in terms of Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) and it is believed that the Saldanha Bay IDZ will be a useful policy tool to advance the objectives of IPAP, New Growth Path (NGP) and National Development Plan (NDP)
The Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) is one of the 18 strategic integrated projects (SIPs) of the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC).