Two KwaZulu-Natal enterprises have risen phoenix-like from the ashes of disasters, in an apt illustration of the resilience that businesses in the province have displayed in the face of both natural and man-made calamities in recent years.
Hajira Khalid, founder of Mac Plastics, a recycling company in Isithebe in the northern part of the province, has endured more than the triple beating of the Covid-19 pandemic, the July 2021 riots and the April 2022 floods.
Similarly Elaine Muthusamy, the founder of SA Metering Solutions, who was diagnosed with lupus and given six months to live, has defeated death and the trio of disasters that struck the province.
Khalid also endured the hijacking and shooting of her husband and her factory being burnt to the ground three times, in 2016, 2018 and 2019. Yet she has rebuilt the business, which is to relaunch with a state-of-the-art recycling plant, at new premises in March 2025.
Khalid’s story started in the Eastern Cape, where she and her husband ran seven general stores before he was hijacked and shot in 2001, leading to the couple moving to the UK. They returned to South Africa in 2006 and explored new business opportunities.
A friend of Khalid’s husband invited him to visit his injection-moulding company in Namibia, which was struggling to source recycled plastic for its production line to make chairs, basins and buckets.
“My husband asked me to research different plastics to see if we could supply Fatima Plastics, but in South Africa in 2006, plastic recycling hadn’t really taken off. It was on a very small scale,” Khalid said.
“There weren’t many people that could supply what we needed — about 34 tonnes a week, sometimes 68 tonnes, to send to Namibia.”
Khalid set up the business with 50 staff in rented premises in Isithebe and imported machinery from China. The enterprise started getting orders to supply recycled plastic to local companies.
“The next year, we purchased more machinery. And because we were expanding, the property we were on was too small. We approached [financial services provider] Ithala and took the premises from them. And then eventually, over the years, we built ourselves up and we had 200 staff,” she said.
“We were exporting and supplying locally and we were importing because the demand was so high. We ended up opening a plant in Saudi Arabia that is still going.
“While there, we picked up on a new technology — recycling reject diaper offcuts from the production line. We then put it through a separation system and each product is then recycled into different streams.”
The company later introduced the same line to South Africa.
“In 2016, we had the first unrest. They had an issue with the mayor; they wanted the mayor removed. We managed to put out the fire from the outside, although they had petrol-bombed us. It took us about two days … but we managed to save the warehouse and the production plant,” Khalid said.
In 2018, her business was again a victim of civil unrest and fire.
“We lost that whole premises, with all the stock and machinery. I had to let about 80 of my 120 staff go. And then when quite a lot of businesses got torched in 2019, that’s when we lost everything,” Khalid said.
With support from Trade and Investment KwaZulu-Natal, Khalid approached Ithala for financial assistance. The company, however, offered her a loan, which she declined because she would not be able to start repaying it until production was running.
“So, we started with having just our contracts in place for waste collection and we then found little recycling companies that were closing after Covid-19. We gave our work to them to service on their manufacturing lines and carried on supplying our customers. And from there is how we built up our business,” she said.
“We are currently exporting to Mozambique, Swaziland and India.”
Khalid recently acquired a R20 million state-of-the-art energy and water efficient recycling plant to produce hygiene and food-grade products that will be launched in March. She plans to open the new facility in a secure business park such as the Dube Trade Port
or Whetstone Business Park.
Muthusamy was diagnosed with lupus, an immune system disease, in 2007 but, despite a long battle with the severe illness — which she eventually overcame — she continued working.
She had moved to Cape Town in 2001, where she worked in administration for a plumbing company, and later co-owned a plumbing shop with her husband, launching her career in water-related businesses.
She joined water metering company Huile Africa in 2016 where she dealt with suppliers in China and handled invoicing and deliveries. But she lost her job when the business closed two years later.
In March 2019, she registered the Amanzimtoti-based SA Metering Solutions, leveraging her knowledge in the industry and relationships with the Chinese suppliers. She started the business at her desk in her lounge at home.
“I used that year to set up the company, because water meters must be certified by the NRCS [National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications] before you can sell. I received my first shipment from China in February 2020,” she said.
But then Covid-19 hit and business slowed.
“The entire world was in lockdown but I had faith that something was going to happen. And because it is water meters, business was continuing — the business did not come to a standstill. But it was slow,” she said.
Her husband quit his job in August 2020 and joined her to handle sales and marketing.
“In 2021, the week before the looting, we received a 40-foot container with stock, and I had it in temporary premises,” she said.
As the looters rampaged in July 2021, Muthusamy was “sitting at home and thinking, ‘My God, the walls were closing down on me again for the second time.”
The looters had initially stormed the premises and stolen some stock on the morning of 21 July but most of it was too heavy to move. But they came back at night and torched the premises.
“I was thinking about 2008, when my life took a turn for the worse and was thinking, ‘Not again!’ Everything was burnt to the ground that night, on 21 July at 11pm,” she said.
She visited the premises later that week.
“I looked at everything … all of my hard work, my sacrifices, had burned to the ground, and three days later, we had to still be careful walking, because underneath there was still fire.
“I looked at it and I cried, because I know what it feels like to lose everything, and I was just building up my life,” she said.
“Someone who has defeated death has a different kind of inner power. Nothing is bigger than that. You can overcome anything else.
“I prayed, and I said, ‘You know what? I don’t know what the reason is for this to happen but I know that there is a reason and there’s a bigger purpose,’” she recalled.
Muthusamy, who lost R3.5 million worth of stock in the arson attack, was selected on an East Coast Radio show for a R20 000 award to help her build up her business.
She contacted a handful of her customers who agreed to hold onto their orders until she could get new stock from her suppliers who undertook to send meters on three months’ credit.
“That was enough for me to trade out of my situation,” Muthusamy said.
She contacted the Small Enterprise Development Agency and the Small Enterprise Finance Agency, which gave her a loan and a grant.
She managed to get her business operational and started supplying distributors with bulk commercial and domestic meters in KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape Gauteng and the Free State.
But sourcing domestic meters and the white boxes that house them from local manufactures soon became difficult due to rising prices.
“I made a decision to go into manufacturing. We invested in moulds. It was cheaper for me to make my moulds in China, ship the completed product and assemble it here in our warehouse,” Muthusamy said.
She said an SA National Accreditation System (Sanas) approved laboratory has been testing her meters but this has driven up costs. Muthusamy recently decided to establish an inhouse Sanas-approved laboratory, which she is in the process of finalising, to take her business to the next stage.
“Once you have a Sanas-accredited laboratory, you are considered one of the big boys,” she said.
“SA Metering Solutions is only five years old … and currently I am at that stage where I am taking the final step to be on a level playing field with companies that have been in this industry for 40 to 50 years.”
