Friends scoop waste contract
SUN CITY: GOLF TOURNAMENT LEAVES 7 800 TON OF RUBBISH
The SMME waste management company of two childhood friends kept Sun City spick and span during the 40th anniversary Nedbank Gold Challenge, attended by almost 60 000 spectators.
Ofentse Melato and Tshego Molefi met when they were just young kids. Molefi a former journalist and Melato, a corporate administrator, decided to quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs. They registered a cleaning services company with the hopes of making a good living.
They weren’t exactly successful with their concept, despite submitting profiles to several shopping centres in the area around Sun City.
But one day, says Melato, they received a call from Sun Village in a panic. “Their waste management service provider had dropped them.” They needed a refuse company to urgently assist.
And so Moli & Mela was born five years ago as a waste management company. In that time, their staff complement has grown from two to 57, and turnover has increased 1 415%, in no small part thanks to a contract at Sun City that kicked off in July.
“We started small and were clueless about waste, so we started attending workshops to learn about the industry and acquire all the relevant accreditations and certificates to be compliant,” Molefi says.
An intentional start
The team’s start at Sun City came when Melato applied for an internship with the company that was managing the resort’s waste at the time.
“We were intentional about the fact that we wanted to win Sun City, so we went about learning as much as possible about the waste situation,” says Melato. After getting their foot in the door by working on landfill reduction, Moli & Mela positioned themselves to bid for the entire deal when it went out to tender.
“In May this year, as a local company we presented our offering, and went up against large companies and as a small company represented only by two women. It was crazy competing with 45 big companies.”
“The inclusion and prioritisation of women and youth in our Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) is embedded in our Local Socio-Economic Development Strategy,” says Tebogo Mokgejane, Sun City’s SED manager.
“At Sun City, we are intentional about empowering young women, not only within our organisation, but also through enterprise development and when we map development programmes.”
The women had been servicing several sites, including shopping centres, industrial companies and local mines before bidding at the resort.
Their staff complement grew from 10 to 57 in six months.
At the recent Nedbank Golf Challenge, they got to prove their metal, cleaning up waste left behind by the spectators.
To cope with the 7 805 tons of waste, about a third of which was recycled, they needed another 80 workers, as well as extra vehicles and uniforms.
“You can imagine the waste produced over the period and managing 127 staff,” says Molefi of the tournament that ran over four days. “It went well. Sun City was impressed how we managed the project.”
Growth ambitions
Next up, they aim to start a commercially viable manufacturing plant where they will use recycled plastics to manufacture products such as bins, bottles, and crates among other items.
The project aims to employ another 300 people. Molefi and Melato
see this as a way to change the narrative of the waste sector as turning rubbish into something that can be used again.
While doing this for themselves, they also see their growth as a way to uplift communities and transfer skills.
“You run around like headless chickens; that’s what happens when you run a start-up. You have to fill a lot of positions, like HR and jump into a truck if the drivers are not there. But we wake up happy every morning because we are living a life of purpose,” says Molefi.