By Benjamin Brits | All images Grease Traps

Established in 2008 as a trap and pipe cleaning company, Grease Traps has powered its way into this niche, fat-filled industry and has become a brand to be reckoned with.

Grease Traps founder and national sales director Hermann Vorster, looks back to when the company was started, taking us through his trials and tribulations of establishing a manufacturing business that today rivals companies that have been dominating the industry for decades.

In the beginning

Vorster, a humble yet confident man, says the idea of grease trap cleaning was inherited from his father, André, who was one of the first people to ever clean a grease trap in South Africa in 1995. A letter of approval from a large chain store was granted allowing his father to go through and clean all of the stores’ grease traps. In the process, his father saw that there was a potential market for a business that no one had explored.

Vorster remembers his father kept on stressing to him that he must keep on cleaning grease traps. When he was 13, Vorster recalls, before his father passed away that year, all he wanted to do was go surfing and mess around – work was not on his to-do list. Nevertheless, his father’s words stuck with him and at 17, having dropped out of school, he took up his father’s advice and pursued grease trap cleaning.

“I got into my bakkie, that was almost falling apart – it literally had no floor boards and I had to start it with a spoon – and I started off in Boksburg, knocking on the chain stores’ doors, selling the service of checking lines and cleaning grease traps.

“At this time there wasn’t any legislation yet whereby you had to have a grease trap in place, never mind cleaned. It was purely at the owner’s discretion to clean or not. The few owners or managers who understood the negative effect that fats, oils and grease (FOG) waste had on the environment would let us in because FOG waste is one of the main causes of blockages, which can be very costly to maintain and have an adverse effect on nature,” says Vorster.

Getting serious

In 2013 Vorster launched the Grease Traps brand. Considering what the Americans called this sort of industry, the first stroke of savvy after doing the research, was that the company was able to register the domain:
www.greasetraps.co.za. At this time the company became an official brand that the South Africa market could start associating with, and a brand that people could trust for grease trap cleaning.

Little did they know that with the right marketing strategy and publicity, they would also start attracting suppliers that wanted to purchase grease traps and related products. “I started off buying grease traps from a local company in South Africa until it got to a point where the company couldn’t keep up with my orders,” he says. “Eventually I thought to myself, ‘you might as well start your own grease trap manufacturing company,’ because the owner was not interested in expanding and wanted to retire. I considered it and started to manufacture my own designs and sizes of grease traps.”

The manufacturing plant started out as a small 50m² factory where Vorster remembers he couldn’t even afford the rent at R3 800 per month and got his first gas bottles from a scrapyard because he couldn’t hire a gas bottle. The company has since expanded to a 1 500m² facility.

But they started manufacturing – Vorster got welders in and taught himself exactly how tungsten inert gas (TIG) welders work, how the bending machines and guillotines worked, and so on. It was a long upskilling process for Vorster and the employees to get the welding right, to get the polishing right, to get the angles right, and so on. Vorster remembers, “The first trap I made left much to be desired and put very simply, it was rubbish. I am proud to say that today we produce a product second to none and currently have a significant footprint in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Within the first year, the company received recognition as a preferred supplier of one of South Africa’s largest national plumbing supply chain companies. There was, however, a serious need in the market for the product to be more reasonably priced, as competitors in the industry had been servicing the markets for decades and essentially held a monopoly, so the prices were unaffordable for the local market like your local fish and chips shops, as it was a large expense for them.

Grease Traps then introduced a locally manufactured product at much lower costs, but very importantly maintained a quality standard that the South African market was accustomed to, taking the market very swiftly and reducing the average market cost of Grease Trap equipment. This blindsided competitors, leaving them no time to respond. What the company did differently was to take a product [which now was governed by legislation], that every organisation who serves or works with food in South Africa requires, and make it affordable to local markets. Since then, the company has experienced a growth rate of more than 200% per annum and currently employs more than 200 people in various business divisions nationally

Wandering through the desert

Building the company came with many challenges, and the story here is not the typical one where everything just fell into place. “I come from Boksburg North, I had a lot of serious personal issues in my younger years and I never completed my schooling, which was a life challenge in itself, but, I just ran with this and I have been blessed with opportunities,” says Vorster. “I’m also very open that I’m a very religious person and truly believe that God has seen to me and all the people that are employed at Grease Traps.

“Breaking into a 30-year monopolised market as a newbie was a massive business challenge. Walking into a supplier’s offices or engineering firm and introducing yourself when all they have known are your competitors for decades was extremely difficult, and it took a lot of humility, patience and perseverance to keep on going,” he says.

Financing was the original major challenge because banks don’t lend money easily to people who have nothing or very little, and because the business was too new to have a credit record. Vorster, using his clever thinking, went to an electronics retailer, opened an account and bought two TVs, two microwaves and two sound systems on credit. He then took these to the local pawn shop and then they would give him 40% of the value. With this cash he was able to run the business. When he got paid, he would go and pay back the loan at the pawn shop. When he got another order, he would follow the same process again this is how he made his cashflow work until the company was able to build up some credit and move forward.

Other challenges have been figuring out the sourcing of the correct consumables to produce their product as well as companies that can service their quantity needs.

What makes the company different

“We have the coolest logo” Vorster laughs, but on a serious note the company is different because they have the skillset and knowledge to manufacture and advise on a variety of different size and design grease traps, which is a unique element of their offering. “Passion is the major driver of business which so many other companies don’t understand because they are only driven by their revenues,” Vorster says.

Being in the cleaning industry first and having cleaned all competitor grease traps, and analysing their design, they have been able to establish which grease traps work the best. This also has afforded the company the data to be able to professionally advise on what designs suit each industry, as well as what the correct size should be for the application. Now designers or engineers don’t have to guess if what they specify will work or not as Grease Traps readily has information available on this.

On a manufacturing base the company has the largest footprint on a national level having their own branches that stock their locally manufactured products. They also have a national sales team that calls on all their customers. The company doesn’t just make grease traps, they also make floor drains and floor channels that are supplied to hospitals, as well as channels that surround cooking areas and areas where clients have their pot wash basins. Other companies in this market also only manufacture, they don’t have the value-add of grease trap and pipe cleaning, or the consulting capability of the Grease Traps team.

The company strives to give a corporate service with a personal touch and focuses on a market that they believe their competitors haven’t touched for decades: the walk-in plumbers who are looking for a grease trap for a small installation or maintenance. Most importantly, according to Vorster, the company has achieved in six years what other companies in the market have taken decades to get right.

Grease Traps sees itself as a green company in that they not only produce quality products, but take care of the environment by removing substances that would otherwise negatively impact it through FOG, that typically suffocate various elements of nature. Going green needs all companies in South Africa to abide by the legislation and to look after the environment as this is not the responsibility of only a handful of companies.

Manufacturing locally only has benefits

Vorster’s opinion is that manufacturing locally is something that people tend to be scared of because manufacturing, in the general sense, is typically dominated by a few bigger players, so penetrating the market, or hoping to, under these circumstances as a new business, is not easy.

With the exception of a few challenges, such as the fluctuation of stainless-steel prices that are dictated by the international market, manufacturing locally has no disadvantages. “We are creating employment, give skills to our employees who previously weren’t skilled, have a positive impact on the environment [in this field], and we support local business (as everything we purchase is locally supplied like the steel, clips handles, pipes, welding rods, equipment, etc.), so we are proud of the local is lekker concept,” says Vorster.

Markets will always change, and manufacturers need to adapt to their clients’ needs. “While you have the relationships, work together on the future, understand where things are heading – like automation – and include your clients in the journey of technology advancements. You may lose out on the one side, but the relationships are so much more important because an ongoing relationship is much more beneficial in the long term,” he adds.

Looking forward

Grease Traps will be opening up a second manufacturing plant in the Western Cape in Montague Gardens this year, making it the first company in South Africa to have two functional specialised grease trap manufacturing facilities.

Furthermore, the company is eyeing Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia before plans to launch manufacturing hubs globally in any developing country that has similar conditions to South Africa.

“New companies will come into the market and cater to the current industry, and this may last for decades, resulting in older companies losing market share. The same applies for any business, really. We need more thinking around the future and what legacy we are going to leave behind,” Vorster concludes.