A little freedom? Some nudists are very upset with Elon Musk, because whenever SpaceX has a launch, authorities close off their fave nudie beach. 🏖️

In This Open Letter

As on-demand food booms, sustainable packaging needs focus – this startup’s bringing the eco-friendly goods…  

Online retail now makes up 10% of South Africa’s R130 billion retail market, thanks to a thriving delivery-first culture.

The average Standard Bank customer spends around R775 per month on takeout and food delivery. For those earning over R60k pm, it could be as high as R1’300 a month.

But did we stop to think about how much more waste this is creating?

The opportunity 

We generate as much as 12.7 million tonnes of waste annually, with just over a third being dumped illegally. 

SA is also becoming more environmentally conscious, driving local restaurants to use more eco-friendly packaging – supper’s outer packaging is becoming part and parcel of the overall product experience.

But there’s a lot SA can still do to help… 

The local startup wrapping it in a bow

Viro Solutions is a local packaging company that specialises in custom-branded, sustainable packaging for the on-demand space (food delivery, grab-and-go and online grocery).

An in-house design team helps brands create everything from viral burger boxes to sleek juice bottles to elevate the dining experience, drive loyalty and amplify brand identity in the last mile. And then they bring together specialist manufacturers (both locally and outside of SA), warehousing at scale and distribution, to offer a one-stop green packaging service.

We caught up with Murray Charter, founder of Viro Solutions, and their wedge is the on-brand packaging that doesn’t just protect food, but becomes the final brand touchpoint in delivery, turning takeaway containers into walking billboards.

Viro skips greenwashed “biodegradables” and builds with recyclables: paper, pulp and high-value plastics that actually get recovered. Through closed-loop pilots like coffee cups reborn as swing tags, they prove that packaging can be designed for circulation, while still looking good.

With the launch of their Digital Product Passport (DPP) platform, Viro is bringing transparency to every package. Scannable QR codes link directly to digital product pages that outline the materials used, where items are made and whether they can be recycled or composted locally.

We’re watching this space…

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Picture this: You’ve spent months prepping for the busiest shopping seasons in SA. Spring holidays. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Christmas. 

Your social strategy is dialled in. Your ad budget is spent. You’ve meticulously planned every detail. 

You pull the trigger and… something’s not right. Something’s broken.

You forgot one thing: your checkout experience. 

The checkout (and the payments infrastructure that powers it) is the Achilles Heel of e-commerce in South Africa. 

Don’t believe me? Here are some stats: 

The result? 

You’ll miss out on millions this shopping season because your checkout experience is broken. 

That’s where NjiaPay comes in. They’re not another PSP. 

They’re building an all-in-one Payment Management Platform (PMP) for online businesses in SA. Your customers get a simple, fast, reliable checkout. You get a suite of easy-to-use tools to manage your PSPs, payment performance, reconciliation and much more. 

And they recently launched a Shopify app and WooCommerce plugin that integrate directly into your store’s shopfront. 

They saved one company R2.6m in previously lost transactions.

Book a demo to see how.

🚗 Meep Meep. Cape Town is debuting the country's first drive-thru for licence disc renewal. Five minutes, no queues; just drive up and pay by card. Mooi.

🕵️ Cloak & Dagger. Local crypto firm NTC Global Trade was put under provisional liquidation amid Ponzi scheme accusations when its business rescue practitioner resigned, citing death threats and the recent murder of their lawyer, Bouwer van Niekerk. Sheez.

📚 Weak Spots. You’d expect cybercrime in finance, but Africa's education sector faced an average of 4’178 attacks per week in August. Why? The digitising education sector is an easy mark due to funding gaps. Cyber safety lessons loading…

🤖 Too far? A 53-year-old Japanese man married an AI chatbot named Miku through a dating app, paying a $17 monthly fee for a companion that’s always ready to “chat” and ever patient. Err, OK.

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Yesterday, we showed you how Proply’s Deal Score gives advanced SA property insights for buyers, asking what you’d most want to know upfront.

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🐓 4 am rooster next door — free alarm forever? (10%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🛡️ Crime trend — “nice area” or “get a bigger dog”? (41%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚗 Traffic/noise — free N1 soundtrack at 3 am? (8%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 🏢 Levies/body-corp drama — HOA telenovela on WhatsApp? (36%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☕ No Plato coffee nearby — no latte, no offer. (5%)

On 16 September 1985, Steve Jobs officially resigned as Apple CEO after losing control of the company.

Exactly 12 years later, on 16 September 1997, Apple hired Jobs back.

Hey, Renier here 👋, co-founder of The Open Letter.

I’ve spent 17 years in SA tech and seen hundreds of startups rise and fall. The ones that made it all had one thing in common: a strong community.

That’s why I started The Founder Collab — a space where 100+ SA founders connect for:

☕ Meetups & events

🎓 Weekly masterclasses

📚 35+ expert sessions on-demand

🤝 A network unlike anything else

Come build your startup alongside me and 100+ other SA founders in The Founder Collab.

Spaces are limited — new founders join weekly.

🛠 Tool to Try: Unblur Image sharpens portraits, group shots and even pet pics.

🤔 That’s Interesting: No one wanted to risk Arnold Schwarzenegger in a comedy, so he and Danny DeVito did Twins (1988) on risk with 40% backend pay. Arnie earned $40M, his biggest payday ever.

🔥 Next Level: Watch this sheepdog clear a mega traffic jam in seconds.

🍔 Hack: The 15 little-known traits that many top performers share.

🌐 Wow Site: Secrets of Maps is an animated deep dive into the Google Maps algorithm.

We are always keen to get reader feedback to help make The Open Letter the most useful of its kind for you. So please select