Sandile Hadebe, an emerging coffin maker, fears that his new business may die because of a harsh trading environment despite increases in deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to Hadebe, who can only sell his coffins directly to funeral parlours, there is no regulated competition in the industry to allow emerging business owners to use competitive prices to lure customers.
"I do not sell my coffins to the public. I only sell to parlours. If I start selling to individuals that will create conflict within the industry and I might be targeted and fear for my life. I will even be scared to leave my work premises and go home. I want to run my business smoothly,” said Hadebe, who has set up his business in Vanderbijlpark, south of Johannesburg.
According to industry experts, the only way a business or an artisan in the funeral industry can survive is by joining an association where they can trade directly with parlours who are members of that association. In some instances the parlours are said to charge bereaved families exorbitant prices for coffins. Earlier this year, the country experienced a shortage of coffins.
“The funeral industry is a cut-throat business with about 30 associations doing as they please," said Johan Rousseau, chairman of the Funeral Industry Reformed Association (Fira). "If any person who runs a company that provides some type of business to the funeral industry doesn’t belong to any association, they will never survive. This business is a law unto itself and is designed in a way that no emerging coffin manufacturer can survive if they aren’t affiliated to an association.”
Rousseau has been advocating for the government to regulate the industry to encourage competition and open the market.
“The problem is that these associations have exclusive relationships and network of coffin suppliers which they then introduce to their members [funeral parlour owners]. If you are not a member of that association they won’t allow you as a manufacturer to sell unless you pay them a fee. The downside of it is that parlours get the coffins for as cheap as R1,000 and then sell them to families for R6,000 or R8,000 and make profit margins of up to 1,200%. Parlours do not allow manufacturers to sell directly to bereaved families,” said Rousseau.
Hadebe added: "These parlours operate like taxi associations. They belong to a certain body. If you don’t belong to an association, they won’t support you. That’s the current challenge I am facing. I need to be approved by them. Even though other parlours are already making orders with me, I need to be registered in order to get more orders.”
Kasie Pillay of Enzo Wood Designs, another coffin manufacturer in Crown Mines, Johannesburg, said there was nothing wrong with how funeral parlours set their prices.
“Everything is business-related. I make a coffin and sell it to the undertaker. The undertaker’s duty is to do the service or the funeral for the deceased. From the time a person dies, that’s when the undertaker’s work begins. They must go and get the body, sort out everything at home affairs, attend to graveyard issues, supply groceries, cars…At the end of the day you are paying the undertaker for the service and not for the coffin per se,” said Pillay.
National Funeral Practitioners Association of SA (Nafupa) president Muzi Hlengwa said funeral parlours did not sell coffins.
"We conduct funeral services. A coffin is part of a funeral service. We conduct a service and charge for that service. When we show the customers the price of the coffin, it is not about the coffin, it is about the service around the coffin. We show the package and the pricing around the coffin,” said Hlengwa.
He said that coffin makers and parlours had to belong to a funeral association to ensure accountability, control, and being able to expose coffin makers who produce coffins that are not of a good quality.
Black Business Council CEO Kganki Matabane urged the affected businesses to approach the Competition Commission to report the excessive pricing.
"We will also engage the department of trade, industry and competition to look at the possible regulation of the industry in order to enable equitable access to all businesses for trade,” said Matabane
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