Emerging foundries are in dire need of business mentoring to guide and support them with improving product quality, increasing penetration of new markets, understanding cost control and selling margins. In many instances this support is key
for survival, particularly through the extremely difficult economic circumstances of the past few years. Taking into account that these SME owners are often an important job creator within their locality, job retention and creating new jobs are of paramount importance.
Achieved to date
Six (6) foundries have been supported in the mentoring programme (one of these dropped out of the programme). At the end of 2010/11 the deliverables have been:
- Five (5) foundries successfully completed the programme
- Two (2) of these foundries have “graduated” from the programme
- Fifteen (15) jobs have been retained
- Ten (10) jobs have been created
- A 40% aggregated productivity increase on turnover has been achieved.
Planned activities for 2011/12
- Six (6) foundries supported in the mentoring programme (3 existing and 3 new)
- Three (3) foundries to “graduate” at the end of the programme
- Twenty (20) jobs retained
- Fourteen (14) jobs created
- A 40% aggregated productivity increase for new entrants to the programme
- A 15% additional productivity increase for foundries in second year of support.
Possible risk identified
It is important to maximise the impact of support on this target group and to communicate the impact achieved not only to government but also the rest of industry. Tax payers would like to see that their contribution is utilised to the fullest.
10-Nov-2011
NFTN steering committee has been in an intensive discussion process during the past year in deciding whether their activities under this result area is truly part of its mandate. The following decision was made:
STATEMENT: Formal SME development remains important for NFTN, but not
necessarily rural foundries
With this in mind funding has been redirected to the other operating result areas for this financial year with the understanding that the result area will be reformulated in the new financial year starting April 2012.
The proposal is that NFTN changes the result area to: SME development to “Expansion of the sector”.
Under this result area we anticipate looking at important aspects such as:
- Promote investment into the sector & market development
- Localisation
- Identification for the development of Public-Private partnerships
- PPPFA, BEE and other accreditation
- Refer foundries in distress to relevant entities
- Export opportunities
