00:05Ashkan produces vital medicine and nutritional supplements for animals, livestock in particular.
00:12The South African company recently agreed to supply all of the countries in the Arabian
00:17Peninsula, but has been unable to send the stock to them.
00:21So we were looking forward by now to having started the commercial terms of the agreement,
00:28but unfortunately with the war, everything's been put on hold.
00:32So even with Qatar, it's a customer we've had for a long time, that business has grown,
00:38and the order that we have for them currently on the floor is the biggest they've placed to date,
00:44but it is sitting here.
01:00When you start seeing equipment getting stuck in different countries and the flow not going
01:06as frequent as what it should be, you start seeing massive increases.
01:10To give you a comparison, the ocean freights hit up to $8,000 on import boxes.
01:18Now if these trends continue, we're going to start seeing similar ripple effects.
01:23We've seen an immediate increase in pricing in the ocean freight rates.
01:29Anything between $100 to $250, lots of surcharges being added, war risks and so forth.
01:36So yes, it has impacted our economy, not just South Africa, but the industry within logistics
01:42tremendously.
01:43A far more serious impact on food security for countries in the Middle East.
01:47Just for animal welfare, it's quite dangerous because ultimately you have the threat of
01:54disease, challenge that you can't treat.
01:56If immunity is not there, it's not going to be able to ward off these things.
02:01And the climate in the Middle East is quite hot.
02:05So these products help the animals cope with the heat.
02:09So the heat stress that they experience, these products really come in handy.
02:13So I think ultimately it's going to affect food shortages.
02:17So if you're going to have the last one, I'm going to have a second one.
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