CHET CHEMICALS
CHET CHEMICALS
So Fresh,
So Clean PRODUCTION: Timothy Reeder
Established in 1965 with the simple aim of manufacturing quality day-to-day household products, the Chet Chemicals facility in Kempton Park, Johannesburg now produces between 200 and 300 metric tons of liquids and powder detergents per day. Though negativity has historically abounded in the manufacturing sector, Chet Chemicals continually bucks the trends to add lucrative products and innovative product lines to its armoury as the industry picks up at speed.
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Chet Chemicals constitutes the household and toiletries arm of Libstar Operations, manufacturing a vast array of products including bleach, dishwashing liquids, fabric softeners and laundry detergents. Over the course of its near-55 year lifetime Chet Chemicals has won and kept contracts with a number of major SA retailers in the household field, including both Unilever and Tiger Brands.
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“Our relationship with Unilever and Tiger Brands, as well as the retailers in South Africa, is very well-suited to our assets,” explained Sales Director Ross Rossouw, when we last featured Chet Chemicals, of the importance of these big relationships to Chet’s status in the market. “In the early days, we had to look at those guys in order to optimise our volumes, keep our costs down and to enter the major South African
retailers. As a result, we’ve always had a good relationship with them.” Headquartered in Johannesburg, Libstar began life in 2005 as an investment holding company concerned with companies operating in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, and now focuses principally on the food, beverage, household and personal care segments of the market.
INDUSTRY FOCUS: MANUFACTURING
The wider Libstar Group consists of 22 business units that operate nationally across 31 sites located in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces, with annual net revenues in excess of R7bn. STAVING OFF NEGATIVITY One could be forgiven for thinking that only challenges and gloom have prevailed in the manufacturing sector as a whole in recent times. Ross Rossouw depicted a, “trading environment in South Africa [which] is very tough at the moment,” while only at this time last year, Business Day identified what it simply called a “glum outlook” for manufacturing in the country, a sector which is the fourth biggest of the economy at 13% after financial services, government and the trade sectors. However, the FCMG market has
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shown itself to be remarkably robust and resistant to the negativity, a mainstay among the most successful in Africa. In its prescient way, Africa. com warned investors in 2011 against, “missing the boat on Africa’s emerging FCMG market,” and the potential it spotted has been borne out many times over in the years that have followed. “When you talk to soap and detergent players,” the website said at the time, “there is one common theme: emerging markets, particularly Africa, is where all the growth opportunities are. “As of 2011, Africa and Asia accounted for 20% of Colgate-Palmolive’s sales,” the report went on. “Soaps and detergents are basic consumer goods that, for many years, have been undersupplied to Africa. As developed markets become saturated, the multinationals have turned their eyes to
the continent’s growing markets.” While the FCMG sector as a whole continues to hold its own, Ross Rossouw offered his own insight into why Chet Chemicals is such a success story, and looks set to remain as such for the foreseeable future. “In the field of contract manufacturing in South Africa Chet Chemicals has been an ever-present for over 40 years, and so we’ve obviously earned our stripes,” he explained. “This endurance has been down to our focus on the quality and the service level we have offered over this time. We have been and remain successful because we manufacture a quality product which adheres to specifications - that is what gives us the edge.” UNILEVER MANUFACTURING UPLIFT Unilever was among the headlines in recent years for its almost R4 billion investment to bolster the South African consumer goods manufacturing space over the last four years, culminating in its fourth SA production facility – a R1.4 billion homecare products factory poised to act as a springboard for its products into the frontier African markets. The facility produces up to 150 000 t/y of household and laundry detergents, while delivering a 50% reduction in the carbon emission footprint and a 70% reduction in water use per ton on that of the original factory. “Transforming our production capacity is one of four critical initiatives that we are driving to meet expected growth in demand,” Unilever global CEO Paul Polman said at the launch of the facility. “This factory will enable us to better serve our consumer with innovation and green technology, while simultaneously improving service levels for our customers.” Former-Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies added at the launch that the Unilever plant had benefited from the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI’s) 12i Tax Allowance Incentive scheme, with a qualifying investment
CHET CHEMICALS
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100% black owned level 1 BBBEE
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Established in 2002 through Unilever’s transformation programme (Vuka Project)
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Specializing in full scope toll manufacturing for global brands like Diversey
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Bulk premixing which Zamani has been offering to household brands like Unilever South Africa, Unilever Nigeria and Unilever Kenya
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Innovators of sodium chloride-based colour speckles which companies like Chet, KT Wash, Unilever and many others have included in their products
+27 11 914 1941 info@zamani.co.za
// FOR US TO BE SUCCESSFUL FOR THE NEXT 40 YEARS ARE MAKING PLANS TO DOMINATE THE AFRICAN MARKET AS A WHOLE // value of R1.2 billion, an investment allowance of R350 million, and a training allowance of R7 million. Of Unilever’s total South African manufacturing investment of R4 billion, the group had received nearly R1.9 billion in incentives from the DTI. Other investments by the group include Durban’s Maydon Wharf
www.zamani.co.za sales@zamani.co.za
Unit B2, Benoni Multi Park, 26 Van Dyk Road, Benoni, 1501
soap, detergents, cleaning products, polishing preparations, perfumes and toilet preparations factory, the Indonsa foods production plant, also in Durban, and the Southpole ice cream plant, in Johannesburg. “It is more than that we have offered tax incentives...we have actively worked together with Unilever on this. We would like local agricultural manufacturers to start benefiting from these investments by being suppliers for plants like the Idonsa factory,” Davies stated. Such investment and benefits can only spell success for Chet Chemicals, especially as Rossouw went on to describe the company’s plans for expansion in the next few years. “With regards our South African growth potential I think we are pretty much there or thereabouts - I wouldn’t go as
far to say that the market is saturated but it is not far off,” he explained. “There is not a lot of potential for incremental growth; the growth we see at this stage is the opening of new stores within the retail environment, and it is 100 times more saturated than in the rest of Africa. For us to be successful for the next 40 years we will have to start making plans to dominate the African market as a whole, and we are busy with that,” Rossouw concluded.
WWW.LIBSTAR.CO.ZA/CHET-CHEMICALS
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Published by CMB Media Group Chris Bolderstone – General Manager E. chris@cmb-media.co.uk Sackville Place, 44-48 Magdalen Street, Norwich, NR3 1JU T. +44 (0) 20 8123 7859 E. info@cmb-media.co.uk www.cmb-media.co.uk CMB Media Group does not accept responsibility for omissions or errors. The points of view expressed in articles by attributing writers and/ or in advertisements included in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the publisher. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained within this magazine, no legal responsibility will be accepted by the publishers for loss arising from use of information published. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrievable system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher. Š CMB Media Group Ltd 2019
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