SA packaging manufacturer Sacks Packaging will have to pay the Swedish Export Credit Agency more than R130m.

A Business Day report says the KZN High Court (Durban) endorsed the decision by the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) that the company settle the bill for the goods it procured from a Swedish group.

The ICC found that the Durban-based company should pay its Swedish service provider €5.9m (R115m) plus interest for goods bought between October 2016 and April 2019 that were not paid for.

The ICC also said Sacks must pay the Swedish Export Credit Agency $343 000 (R6.4m) for its costs in the arbitration and a further R10.6m plus interest for the agency’s legal costs.

Sacks tried unsuccessfully to argue that the High Court could not conclude that the ICC had jurisdiction to determine the matter, and that the application to make the chamber’s findings a court order should be refused.

‘All of these challenges, however, constitute argument rather than fact,’ the court ruled in a judgment handed down in December.

‘Apart from a bare denial, there is nothing to suggest or argue why this was not agreed to by the furnishing of further orders, by the acceptance of goods under such order, or why quasi-mutual assent would not be applicable. Nor is there any explanation as to why the several years of purchase orders and invoices containing the same proviso could be ignored,’ it ruled.

Full Business Day report

Judgment