Even for a seasoned entrepreneur like Pieter Kleinhans, who built his business from a tiny one-machine operation to a huge 3500 square metre factory today, load shedding stands out as a tough obstacle.
“It’s massively challenging,” says the 56-year-old co-owner of Precision Moulding & Moulds (PMM), a plastics-manufacturing business in Industria, Johannesburg. The dozens of machines in his 74-worker factory take a while to warm up after load shedding, he says, leading to a loss of up to three and a half hours of production with some machines after a two-hour load shedding session.
“But”, he says sanguinely, “you make a plan”. Pieter and his business partner Morné Steenekamp have no fewer than 520 solar panels on the roof of their factory in Telford Street and four inverters providing enough power to keep essential machines operating through load-shedding during the day. The solar system is backed up by a large diesel generator to bridge load shedding sessions at night.
It was an expensive exercise to install the alternative power supply, says Pieter. A battery storage system that would have helped to make them completely power independent remains out of reach, but with the savings from the solar power, Pieter feels that PMM is in a strong position in the market, able to keep most of their production going while other factories in the industry have to shut down.
PMM funded the generator through Business Partners Ltd new Energy Fund for SMEs, which did not require a deposit as the bank-finance option may have entailed.
Pieter has been “making a plan” since the start of his career in Johannesburg as an apprentice toolmaker. A year into his first job he was appointed foreman over senior artisans. It was daunting, he says, but it taught him to lead by showing respect, and by being forthright about things he didn’t know – skills that stood him in good stead throughout his career.
In his mid-twenties, Pieter was offered the opportunity to take over a tool-making workshop as his employer amalgamated with another company and spun off the division. After seriously grappling with the decision – he always had the urge to run his own business – he declined the offer to gain some more experience as an employee. Looking back on it, Pieter says it was probably a good choice, because starting his own business eventually proved much harder than he would have been able to cope with at that stage.
Pieter spent the bulk of his career at a single mid-sized company where he gained intimate knowledge of the manufacturing of plastic products. His entrepreneurial ambitions were satisfied by his steady climb in the company, first as toolmaker and then manager of the mould division. Steadily Pieter found himself recruiting new clients – not through any natural sales abilities, he says, but through his deep technical knowledge.
Eventually he ran two factories for the company, bought shares and became a director, but he started feeling increasingly stifled by the company’s lack of vision, innovation, renewal and growth. In his twentieth year at the company, after it dawned on him that he had single-handedly recruited every single one of the company’s clients, he asked the boss if he would consider selling the company to him. He refused point blank, and when Pieter walked out of the boss’s office he knew what he had to do.
In 2014, at 47 years of age, Pieter started working on his own company. He identified a machine that he wanted to start with and scouted around for financing. He came upon Business Partners Ltd who were willing to finance the machine plus some working capital based solely on his expertise and business vision.
After resigning, Pieter took a three-month contract with another company while he set up a tiny 420 square metre workshop with four workers in Kya Sands with the help of his daughter who did not hesitate to join her father in the new venture. What followed was the most difficult year of his life. The first month’s turnover was R15 000, one of many months where he had to forgo a salary. For days on end he slept at the workshop, with his wife joining him there over weekends. He had maxed out his credit cards and by the skin of his teeth pulled through.
Pieter is particularly proud of the fact that, out of principle, he did not poach a single client from his last employer – who has since been liquidated. “I built my business entirely with new clients and new products,” he says. His first client was a large manufacturer of plastic products for the construction industry who was looking for someone to pass on some overflow work to. Today, PMM still makes no fewer than seven different products for them on machines that run around the clock.
A year and a half into running his own business, Pieter met Morné who was running a mould making business. Both recognised the synergy between their respective businesses, and soon they amalgamated to form PMM. This was the first of several leaps forward for the two partners.
Another followed with the labour strike that hit the plastics industry in 2018 when a large stationery manufacturer outsourced a huge amount of work to their young company. And scarcely two years later, the Covid-19 pandemic turned into yet another growth spurt. In the first month PMM’s turnover plummeted as orders dried up, but then the demand for bottles and sanitiser skyrocketed and the company recorded its highest monthly turnovers ever.
Most recently, PMM bought over a small company that gave them the capacity to manufacture ointment dispensing tubes. Again, they chose Business Partners Ltd to finance the transaction. For now they are thinking of consolidating their growth, but it is a strategy that they don’t tend to stick to very well, laughs Pieter.
Chances are that there will be more growth despite all the problems wrought by load shedding, or, given Pieter’s knack for turning adversity into opportunity, perhaps even because of it.
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