Chinese online shopping portal Temu has brought a physical warehouse to South Africa, allowing for quicker delivery of some products to local customers. Products stocked locally will be marked “local” and will feature delivery times of two days or less.

The company follows Amazon’s example (though much faster, given that the service only launched in SA some eighteen months ago) by bringing its products closer to our market.

Shorter time to Temu

What isn’t certain is how pricing will alter for purchases made from the local Temu depot. Current pricing takes advantage of South African import rules to offer sometimes ridiculous pricing to ship products at steep discounts. Shipping is free but import taxes, which tend to be lower than expected, bump the price up somewhat.

Bringing Temu’s products into the country before they’re ordered might be subject to different, more stringent import rules than minor purchases garner. It’ll be an interesting experiment to see whether it remains cheaper to order a product from China than it is from the local warehouse. If time is money, then you can save a little of the latter if you don’t mind a bit more of the former.

MyBroadband points out that the Chinese online retailer doesn’t list which local courier company will handle shipments. Odds are that FastWay and others listed on the Temu app will handle last-mile delivery, while Buffalo Logistics takes care of shipping from China to SA’s warehouse.