LOCAL MANUFACTURING
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The Grease Traps manufacturing team in Johannesburg.
the main causes of blockages, which can be
very costly to maintain and have an adverse
effect on nature,” says Vorster.
GETTING SERIOUS
In 2013 Vorster launched the Grease Traps
brand. Considering what the Americans
called this sort of industry, the first stroke of
savvy after doing the research, was that the
company was able to register the domain:
www.greasetraps.co.za. At this time the
company became an official brand that the
South Africa market could start associating
with, and a brand that people could trust for
grease trap cleaning.
Little did they know that with the right
marketing strategy and publicity, they would
also start attracting suppliers that wanted to
purchase grease traps and related products.
“I started off buying grease traps from a local
company in South Africa until it got to a point
where the company couldn’t keep up with
my orders,” he says. “Eventually I thought
to myself, ‘you might as well start your
own grease trap manufacturing company,’
because the owner was not interested in
expanding and wanted to retire. I considered
it and started to manufacture my own designs
and sizes of grease traps.”
The manufacturing plant started out as a
small 50m2 factory where Vorster remembers
he couldn’t even afford the rent at R3 800
per month and got his first gas bottles from
a scrapyard because he couldn’t hire a gas
bottle. The company has since expanded to a
1 500m2 facility.
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
But they started manufacturing – Vorster got
welders in and taught himself exactly how
tungsten inert gas (TIG) welders work, how
the bending machines and guillotines worked,
and so on. It was a long upskilling process for
Vorster and the employees to get the welding
right, to get the polishing right, to get the
angles right, and so on. Vorster remembers,
“The first trap I made left much to be
desired and put very simply, it was rubbish.
I am proud to say that today we produce a
product second to none and currently have a
significant footprint in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Within the first year, the company received
recognition as a preferred supplier of one
of South Africa’s largest national plumbing
supply chain companies. There was, however,
a serious need in the market for the product
to be more reasonably priced, as competitors
in the industry had been servicing the
markets for decades and essentially held a
monopoly, so the prices were unaffordable for
the local market like your local fish and chips
shops, as it was a large expense for them.
Grease Traps then introduced a locally
manufactured product at much lower costs,
but very importantly maintained a quality
standard that the South African market
was accustomed to, taking the market very
swiftly and reducing the average market cost
of Grease Trap equipment. This blindsided
competitors, leaving them no time to respond.
What the company did differently was to
take a product [which now was governed
by legislation], that every organisation who
serves or works with food in South Africa
July 2019 Volume 25 I Number 5