Durban Business - Global and Local

05 March, 2005

The fast-paced demands of today’s increasingly globalised marketplace pose huge challenges – and opportunities – for local business and industry owners. Those who fail to keep up with changing trends face ruthless competition from nimbler counterparts who may be located just around the corner, or at the other side of the world.

This is as true for huge concerns like Toyota and Mondi Paper with thousands of staff, as it is for small manufacturers employing a handful of people. For those who restructure their operations to move with the times, the rewards are potentially immense as vast overseas markets open up to them. Many of eThekwini’s entrepreneurs, big and small, are seizing this opportunity with both hands. The two companies mentioned above, both part of multinational corporations, continue to inject billions of rands into expansion plans to remain globally competitive; investment in eThekwini that has earned them high praise from Mayor Obed Mlaba.

And they’re by no means the only ones. Aunde South Africa, a Durban-based exporter of automotive seat covers to Germany and Australia, recently announced an R80-million investment in a new plant at Southgate Park, Amanzimtoti.
 
Multinationals are not the only ones taking up the global challenge. Still in the automotive field, local born entrepreneur Mthembeni Mkhize runs TC Manufacturing CC which makes parts for Toyota, BMW, Volvo and other car makers. With factories in Scottburgh and Bronkhorstpruit, Mkhize is living proof that with enough determination and drive, growing up in KwaMashu is no handicap to becoming a global player.

The local arts and craft market is also exploding onto the international scene, with eThekwini artists leading the charge. Talented young sculptor, Lindelani Ngwenya, has taken a favourite local craft medium, copper wire, and invented a totally new technique of working it, creating sculptures of human figures and bowls which have caught the eye of local and international collectors. Examples of his work have featured in a South African craft book and graced the tables at a high-profile Proudly South African function at the Hilton Hotel. It continues to attract much attention on a local arts and crafts website, www.artroots.co.za. Ngwenya is only one of hundreds of local artists around the province who are benefiting from dramatic increase in demand for high quality work.

Many of them choose to distribute their wares through Durban’s internationally renowned BAT shop. Founded nine years ago by Marisa Fick-Jordaan, it has grown into a thriving wholesale and export business, drawing on the creative energies of almost 2000 crafters, several now earning a good living thanks to the demand. Others carving a global niche in this vibrant field are too numerous to mention, but they include the Alice Street-based Thulubonge Pottery and Craft Manufacturers, Mnotho  Jewellery at the DIT’s Berea Campus and Usizo Clothing at Phoenix Industrial Park.

Small eThekwini entrepreneurs are also no slouches when it comes to exploiting the opportunities offered by world’s biggest shopping mall, the Internet, with scores of city-based websites offering goods and services to the world. Again, there are too many to list, but they range in diversity from sites like www.cyberface.co.za (search engine optimisation) to www.healthspas.co.za (an online directory of health spas) to www.oilrigwatch.com (offshore oil jobs). Proof that eThekwini people know how to work smart as well as hard!

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