I have a contract where the other party has sort of exclusivity on my product for distribution. I need to end the exclusivity and need advice.

Copy of contract?

Hi there and thank you for your question,

I am a practicing attorney based in South Africa and I will assist you with your question. Please feel free to ask as many follow up questions in order to clarify your question. If you have a new question, you must please open a new thread.

If your contract is for a fixed-term period of time, then the only way out for you would be to cancel the contract. But, in order to do that, you would need this guy to breach the contract which would then give you the right to cancel it. 

Otherwise, if your contract is silent on the period that the contract runs for, then it would run on a month-to-month basis, or it would continue to operate until such time as you gave notice that it would terminate. In that instance, you could simply send them a letter advising them that you have elected to terminate the contract effective 31 January 2020, or such similar date. 

If there is a part of the answer which you need more advice on, or clarity please continue in this same thread instead of opening a new question.

Att. Patrick

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Having had a look at your agreement, it is plain to see that it commences on 1 July 2019 and operates for 24 months, whereafter it can renew for a further period. In terms of clause 3, you can terminate the agreement only after that initial 24 month period. 

There are further specific provisions for termination at the bottom of clause 3, but none of them seem to apply. 

Clause 15 deals with the breach. Basically, it says that if a party breaches the agreement and fails to rectify the breach within 30 days, then the other party can cancel the agreement. 

It seems to me that you're locked into this initial period, and that if you try to cancel the agreement, that cancellation would be seen as a material breach which would open you up to damages!

Furthermore, clause 6 deals with your non-competetion aspects. It says that you can't compete with the services which are set out in the project. 

If you breach that, it would constitute a material breach! So I would advise against that.  Also, your agreement doesn't contain a territory, so it is operational throughout South Africa!