COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Distell, black-owned business locked in battleLiquor giant Distell and black-owned duty-free business Nu Africa are locked in a bitter battle over the sale of liquor to diplomats.Duty-free liquor is a key diplomatic privilege in South Africa, but diplomats must purchase reasonable or moderate quantities and are not permitted to resell products.However, the system has been abused. Last year, South Africa expelled diplomats from Malawi and Lesotho for the illicit sale of alcohol that cheated the taxman out of R100 million a month.Currently, the targeted excise tax burdens for wine, beer and spirits are 11%, 23% and 36% of the weighted average retail prices, respectively - which amounts to a significant discount, particularly at wholesale prices in large quantities.Nu Africa sells most of its alcohol into seafaring and diplomatic circles. Distell, the country's biggest liquor producer, has refused to sell its products to Nu Africa – prompting the latter to take its complaint against Distell to the Competition Tribunal. Hearings into the matter started this week.By bringing the matter before the tribunal, Nu Africa is hoping to compel Distell to resume supplying them with alcohol, saying their unwillingness to do so amounts to abuse of dominance that is undermining their profits.Distell owns brands like Savanna, Amarula, Bain’s, Three Ships, Harrier, Richelieu, Nederburg, and Durbanville Hills. Nu Africa director Prudence Shongwe says some of these products have earned particular favour with foreign diplomats, who instead go to competitors still receiving supply.-Fin24Twitter user signups at all-time highTwitter CEO Elon Musk says new user signups to the social media platform are at an "all-time high", as he struggles with a mass exodus of advertisers and users fleeing to other platforms over concerns about verification and hate speech.Signups were averaging over two million per day in the last seven days as of November 16, up 66% compared to the same week in 2021, Musk said in a tweet.He also said that user active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly 8 billion active minutes per day in the last seven days as of November 15, an increase of 30% in comparison to the same week last year.Hate speech impersonations decreased as of November 13 compared to October of last year.Reported impersonations on the platform spiked earlier this month, before and in wake of the Twitter Blue launch, according to Musk.Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company, has said that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an "everything app" called X.Musk's "Twitter 2.0 The Everything App" will have features like encrypted direct messages (DMs), longform tweets and payments, according to the tweet.-Fin24

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