Shamila Trading Enterprises, based in Rolle Village, in Thulamahase, a district in Bushbuckridge is an exceptional example of how a small, struggling business can immediately benefit from SABS certification and product testing. The process towards getting certification assisted with streamlining operations and when certification was achieved – new clients were willing to do business with the company.
The start of the business
Shadow Nyathi established the company in 2003, by using his family land to set up a small brick making operation. His operation only began in 2005 and with the intention of making bricks to build a boundary wall around his land. His boundary wall needed thousands of bricks and he invested in the manual equipment and resources to make bricks. During this process of trial and error, Shadow realised that he could turn brick making into a sustainable business and started to explore quality and standards regarding brick making.
In 2011, Shadow began to make commercial bricks for sale. His first project started when he had to supply 3500 bricks for 250 houses in a nearby housing development project. This project spurred him to invest in bigger manual presses and more labour to meet the production expectations.
The need for certification
There was a lot of construction and development happening in the village and within Bushbuckridge, with roads and shopping centres being built. When a KFC was being developed, less than a kilometre away from the plant, Shadow applied to be the brick supplier and was confident he would get the work as he was the closest supplier. To his surprise the contractors wanted system and product certification to verify that his company could supply the relevant products. While Shamila was able to supply sand and crusher to the site, it was a harsh awakening that the company needed to formally acquire certification for its products and its management systems – if it was to participate in business opportunities at its doorstep.
Shamila began the journey towards certification in 2014. “It was not an easy journey as every process needed to be documented, controls needed to be implemented and it became very clear that certain skilled resources needed to be employed, if the business was to grow. It was also frustrating to stop doing business and to think about the operations,” recalls Nyathi. Fortunately, the hands on assistance from the SABS SMME consultant made the journey easier. Shamila had grown from 2005, from one employee producing a few hundred bricks a month to fifty employees producing hundreds of thousands of bricks in a month.
As a result of the certification process, Shamila will now be able to bid for more projects, sell their tested bricks at retailers and grow their operations to supply bricks throughout the Mpumalanga province. Shadow has plans to expand the plant, buy more equipment and trucks and most importantly to hire more people from Rolle Village to economically empower them.
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