12 minute read
Caltex
Caltex Braford Lubricants
Opens A New Custom-Built warehouse in Msasa, Harare
text by Michael Nott photos by Structure and Design plans by Gemma Temlett
Caltex Braford Lubricants is a division of Braford Investments (Pvt) Limited, a Zimbabwean company that was incorporated in January 2003. The division is the official distributor of Caltex branded lubricants in Zimbabwe for Astron Energy (Pty) Ltd. Caltex Braford Lubricants is headquartered in Msasa, Harare and operates two warehouses one in Msasa Harare and another in Belmont Bulawayo.
The head office is located at 4 Silverton Road, Msasa. The warehouse and sales department were previously situated at 18 Harrow Road, Msasa. When the adjacent property at 2 Silverton Road became available Caltex Braford Lubricants seized the opportunity to consolidate its head office, warehouse, and sales departments on two adjoining properties.
The new warehouse at 2 Silverton Road faces directly onto Mutare Road giving Caltex Braford Lubricants maximum brand visibility. In addition the facility is more spacious and offers easier access to haulage trucks. The new premises are near major businesses and are accessed via a service road parallel to Mutare Road. It’s also conveniently located for walk-in customers and bulk buying customers.
The existing house at 2 Silverton Road was converted to company offices. Local architect Gemma Temlett sited the new warehouse quite far back from the road so that haulage trucks can pull up in front (safely off the road), get unloaded or loaded up, and then drive off back onto Mutare Road without having to reverse or turn around. It’s a clever and practical space management solution and there’s still ample parking space for smaller vehicles. Additional outdoor storage space is accessed via a sliding gate.
The structure is simple – it’s a rectangular building of 15m wide and 27m long making a total of 405 sq. m with a height of 4.5m. The dimensions were determined by the internal space planning for racking and efficient forklift circulation. It’s basically a steel skeleton – supplied by Agristructures – with brick footing. There’s a roller shutter door in front for loading plus two smaller doors for ordinary pedestrian access and emergency exits. The Chromadek roof has Alububble insulation and a series of translucent sheets for natural light plus additional LED lights for extra lighting as needed.
The front right-hand corner of the warehouse has the counter sales room which has an aluminium and glass frontage. The counter sales office has a dropped ceiling below the Chromadek roof to help keep it cool and to separate it from the warehouse environment.
Work on the new warehouse started at the beginning of August 2021 and it was completed on the 1st of December 2021. The main contractors were Agristructures, Westmoreland Construction and Sirston Consultants as the structural engineers. Gemma Temlett was the project architect.
Caltex Braford Lubricant’s main customers include retailers in the hardware and motor industries, transport operators, the mining industry, the construction industry, the manufacturing sector, and the railway sectors.
Caltex Braford Lubricants’ product range includes:
Passenger Vehicle Engine Oils: • Havoline® ProDS V SAE 5W-30 • Havoline Ultra S SAE5W40 • Havoline Formula 20W50 • Havoline Motor Oil SAE 40
Heavy Duty Diesel Engine Oils • Delo 400 MGX SAE 15W40 • Delo Gold Ultra SAE 15W 40 • Delo Gold Ultra T SAE 10 W 40 • Delo Silver Multigrade SAE15W40 • Delo Silver SAE 40 • Delo Silver SAE 30
Gear Oils • Delo Gear EP 5 85W140 • Delo Gear EP5 80W90 • Havoline Multi- vehicle ATF Coolants Premixes: • Delo 50/50: Delo XLC Antifreeze/Coolant
Pre-mixed 50/50 • Havoline 33/67: Havoline Xtended Life
Pre-mixed 33/67 Anti-freeze coolant
Other Specialty Oils • Havoline Brake Fluid 260Dot 4 • Super outboard 3 • Havoline Super 2T
Railroad • Delo 6170 CFO 40
Agriculture • Supertractor SAE 15W40 • 1000 THF • Textran TDH Premium
Heavy Duty Diesel Transmission Fluids • Delo Torque Force 30 • Delo Torque Force 50
Industrial Gear Oils • Meropa 150 • Meropa 220 • Meropa 320 Hydraulic Systems • Rando HD 32 • Rando HD 46 • Rando HD 68 • Rando HD 100
General Industrial & Circulating Oils • Aries 150 • Aries 320 • Compressor oil • GST 46
Greases • Delo Starplex EP 2 • Multifak EP 2 • Multifak RSP3 • Ultra-Duty • Crater 5
Caltex Braford has won several awards over the years beating other distributors in the SADC region, some of the awards are: • Highest Sales in Volume Growth in 2013 • 1st Place Highest Overall Sales Volume in 2014 • Highest Delo Premium Volume 2015 • Highest Delo Premium Volume 2016
For more information about our products including technical specifications please visit www.braford.co.zw
Visit the new warehouse at: 2 Silverton Road, Msasa, Harare – along Mutare Road.
Call: 0717 066 169 Email: sales@braford.co.zw
Bulawayo Warehouse 97 Plumtree Road, Belmont Call: +263-0292-475152
CALTEX LIST
GEMMA TEMLETT- A R C H I T E C T U R A L S T U D I O WEST MOLENS ECOMATIC INVESTMENTS ZONAVOX INVESTMENTS ALUMIN STRUCTURES CLOSSEN ENGINEERING ( PVT) LTD SUNRISE TELECOM GARDEN CONCEPTS BETA BRICKS TITMAT INVESTMENTS GARAGE DOORS POMONA STONE QUARRIES ORCA GROUP SONNES PROJECTS BIZMOON ENTERPRISES BONGA INVESTMENTS TAPSON SECURITY EK TILERS SHELVIT CLAUDE NEON SIGNS THE STEEL BUILDING CO. HOMESTYLE BRICKS SUPERGM BUILDING CONTRACTORS MILANO
THE ROYAL SENCHI
Best Luxury Architecture Design Africa Continent Winner 2021
(The Royal Senchi Hotel and Resort)
In 2009 Penny Stone and Richard Beattie, partners of award winning architectural practice The Stone/Beattie Studio, were commissioned to design a new river lodge and resort in Ghana. The Volta River frontage site was located near the Adomi Bridge crossing at Akasombo, around 90km north of the capital city Accra and a 20 minute drive south of the Volta Dam at Akusi, the world’s third largest man-made lake. The hydroelectric power station, completed in the mid 1960’s, supplying electricity to the national grids in Ghana, and neighbouring Togo and Benin, also resulted in the controlled river water level downstream where it passes through the Akwamu Gorge and forest, home to the rare white-necked rock fowl (Picathartes gymnocephalus). The alluvial flood plain below the dam had become agricultural land for small scale plantain, sweet potato, banana and cassava farming. Caged tilapia aquaculture on the river had also become an important cash crop while resettlement on the west bank meant the area had developed into a popular weekend retreat for Accra residents, but with most visitor accommodation being small lodge ‘bed and breakfast’ type facilities, bars and restaurants.
The Royal Senchi project promoter, Nana Asamoah Yeboah Afari, originally operated a garden restaurant and small twelve bedroomed lodge on the site. However he had the greater vision of developing a uniquely Ghanaian hotel and resort for week day conferencing as well as weekend breaks and weddings. Parallel with Stone and Beattie developing concept designs for the new hotel and resort, they undertook contextual investigative visits across the length and breadth of Ghana with their client. This enabled the architects to identify building construction materials (notably the quarrying of stone at Akasombo for feature walling), hardwoods for use in furniture manufacture, basket weaving, fabric designs by Kente cloth weavers from Ghana’s second city Kumasi, and Andinkra textile printing (symbols which not only have a decorative function but also represent objects that encapsulate evocative messages conveying traditional wisdom, aspects of life, or the environment). These materials and traditional designs were later incorporated within the building and installation design detailing.
Study and research trips were also made to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and the African Travel Indaba in Durban. This showcases the widest variety of tourism products and services for the international travel trade. It attracts buyers and media from across the world through exhibiting tourist accommodation, tour operations, game lodges, transport, online travel, luxury products, hidden gems, media publications and industry associations.
World Luxury Hotel Awards
Pre-construction site investigations by the Ghanaian consulting civil and structural engineering team had established the alluvial flood plain soils as having limited bearing capacity. This necessitated the design of deep reinforced concrete raft foundations and a concrete framed superstructure restricting the architectural design and construction development to two storeys in height. While municipal water was available nearby, there was no waterborne sewerage in the vicinity and the national grid electrical supply was subject to frequent outages. Site services design was identified as a priority for this development and required the construction of a services farm holding water storage tanks, a sewerage/effluent treatment plant, solar water heaters and solar collectors capable of generating adequate electricity for the site and building lighting.
The final building design resulted in free flowing, organic, contemporary African architecture that spells out its richly embedded Ghanaian culture, Old African yet modern, rural yet cosmopolitan. Stone and Beattie worked closely with Zimbabwean interior designer Colleen Myburgh, whose creativity and personal touch is entrenched in the completed project through her design flair and use of Burnt Earth Design feature ceramic tiling in floor finishes and the swimming and plunge pools.
Site servicing and construction works commenced in 2011 with the abandoned quarry at Akosombo being reopened to extract the stone used extensively as feature wall cladding. Massive, petrified Iroko hardwood tree trunks, used as structural roof supporting columns, were harvested from the Volta Lake bed under a government ecoconcession programme and concrete blocks, used in the masonry infill construction, were moulded on site.
As the local grass was considered unsuitable for roof thatching, fire proofed thatching grass and gum poles for the roof structures were sourced in South Africa, containerised, and shipped from Durban to the port of Tema in Ghana, before being transported to site by road. A team of thatchers from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe travelled to Ghana and taught over 20 Ghanaians the art of thatching during roofing construction, a skill which had been lost to that country a century earlier with the arrival of corrugated iron roof sheeting.
The symbol adopted by The Royal Senchi in its logo is the Akan stool with its upturned seat. This is the most important representation of royal regalia and the prized possession of an Akan chief. It reflects the pride, passion, care and uniquely ‘royal’ experience the hotel and resort offers each and every guest. All 84 bedrooms (74 standard bedrooms, 9 executive suites and the Presidential ‘Picathartes’ suite) are designed to the highest international standards with views over the Volta River, ’Eco island’ and the delta flood plain downstream of Akwamu Gorge. Each bedroom at ground level opens directly onto the landscaped gardens and lawns stretching down to the river bank, while all rooms at first floor level open onto private, secluded balconies. Public areas include the reception, a gift shop, tours and travel, a business centre, three restaurants catering to all palates, two bars and a wellstocked sports bar, a golf driving range, swimming pool, tennis courts, children’s playground, spa and a fully equipped fitness centre. The adjoining conferencing facility, accessed independently of the hotel reception, can accommodate either single conferences for up to 300 delegates or be subdivided into two separate conferencing rooms each carrying 100 plus delegates.
The river venue offers guests boat cruises, kayaking, and access to the ‘Eco island’ nature park and its indigenous tropical forest and home to numerous bird species and butterflies specific to the Eastern Region.
Opened in 2014, the completed project has since received over a dozen awards, notably the Ghana Tourism Authority, the Ghana Hotels Association and the Green Hotel Award. It was awarded Ghana’s Leading Hotel by World Travel Awards in 2015. In 2018 the hotel operations were adjudged to be‘Indigenous Company of the Year’ under the Ghanaian Business Awards. In 2019 it was included in West Africa’s 10 Best Luxury Hotels by travelnoire.com and www.africa.com.
In November 2021, The Royal Senchi was awarded the coveted World Luxury Hotel Awards - Best Luxury Architecture Design: Africa Continent Winner – an important accolade for Ghana Tourism and Zimbabwean architectural design.
