Green Bottle Recyclers

Malcolm Green's description of how he and two workers used to load 24 tons of bottles onto a superlink truck by hand in the days before he could afford a forklift, is a striking metaphor for the way he grew his business over the past three decades.

Just after school, Green struggled to find a job in Durban, where he was born. One day he followed a bakkie loaded with cardboard to a recycling depot. His father-in-law lent him a van, and he started collecting cardboard from local hotels and restaurants. His job description at the time was that of labourer, driver, rep, accountant, and at times, mechanic. Rather than discard the empty bottles he found in many cardboard boxes, he started selling it to a bottle recycling plant in Durban which washed bottles for Gilbeys and sent wine bottles back to the wine industry in the Western Cape.

As soon as his volumes allowed it, he rented superlinks to ship used bottles to the Western Cape himself. He started acquiring skills that would take his business ''out of the backyard''. A major step forward came in 1990, when a long-standing client offered to sell him their automated bottle-washer. The mechanisation of Greens Bottle Recyclers has put the company on a roller-coaster growth trajectory as it secured increasingly larger corporate contracts with the likes of Nampak, Consul, SAB and Stellenbosch Farmers Winery. Services include almost every aspect of bottles apart from making them – sorting, repacking, delabeling, washing and transporting.

Green believes they are stronger than ever, having integrated a collection network with a delabeling and washing process. This enables them to sell their own recycled bottles instead of servicing other businesses' products. The business recently obtained a liquor license thereby making Malcolm the first Black Distributor of liquor in the wine industry. With potential clients in Africa and Russia, the sky is the limit for this all in one wine bottling an selling business.