When Haroon Essa started out as a young man working in a small family business selling fresh produce in the Pietermartizburg CBD with his father and brother back in the sixties, he could never have anticipated the extent to which the firm would transform and expand over decades.
Essa, 71, set out to source potatoes directly from farmers at the height of apartheid, dealing with farmers in the then Orange Free State. He went on to plant his own first crop of potatoes in 1977, which turned a strong profit as the vegetable was scarce due to low yields.
But it was only five years later that he finally realised his vision, together with his brothers Sacoor and Iqbal, to open Frimax Foods (Pty) Ltd in Willowton, Pietermaritzburg. Essa took over as CEO and 100% shareholder when his brothers left in the early nineties and his sons Baboo, managing director, and Shamir, operations director, later joined the firm.
“To penetrate the marketplace was a huge mission. In 1998 the Pietermaritzburg factory became too small as demand exceeded production,” Essa said.
Essa moved the business to larger 12 000m² premises in Verulam, and grew to become a household name and a major player in the multibillion-rand potato and corn snack manufacturing sector in South Africa, exporting across the continent.
Today the firm employs 480 staff at its factory and distribution centres throughout the country and supplies national supermarket chains such as Shoprite Checkers and Massmart as well as independent shops.
Frimax has won the Shoprite Checkers Best National Supplier Award repeatedly, and an Institute for Quality award recognising its contribution to skills development.
Baboo Essa was about 8 when his father moved from running what had become one of the biggest independent fruit and vegetable wholesale businesses in the city to becoming a commercial snack producer. Essa had always possessed strong business acumen and motivated his sons to join the firm.
Shamir Essa said the brothers both started out on the factory floor as teenagers after school and joined the firm as young men – supervising the dispatch of goods and loading on to trucks, reading consumer mail and assessing call logs, even working as machinery operators, frying potatoes and packing boxes.
Shamir said the business, which now exports 10% of its production across the SADC region to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho, and has a fleet of 90 commercial vehicles and trucks, had experienced huge capital expansion over the past five years.
The firm runs its own distribution warehouses in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pietersberg and Port Elizabeth.
“For two years we have had a space problem. We are having problems with trucks for deliveries and dispatch. If we run the factory at full capacity, by the Wednesday we have to shut down certain lines because we don’t have enough storage space.
“We have categories of 30 to 40 lines for the different flavours that we produce,” he said. But Essa is reluctant to divulge just how many tons of chips the factory produces, except to say that it runs 24-hour production lines.
Essa said the aim now was to find a factory of around 24 000m² to accommodate the business’s current and future growth demands.
Despite the drought, which resulted in an interruption in production for six weeks last year due to a shortage of a specific variety of frying potatoes, the brothers say the economic downturn has not affected their business, which offers “a quality chip at a better price”. With the economy falling back, consumers would also prefer a cheaper alternative at a quality price – a housewife would look at an alternative.
“With the economy slowing down and with our exports into neighbouring countries, we haven’t seen a decline. Where our decline comes in is with supply issues of potatoes, oil and corn,” Essa said.
For now the business is focused on growing its market share domestically and in the SADC region, although there is a possibility it could expand further in future.
“We concentrate more on Africa because transport costs are an issue for crisps, because it is a lightweight product and low value in the container and it is regionally based.
“There is a lot of competition from manufacturers of snacks out of Asia, and if you want to compete globally you have to open up factories everywhere,” Essa said.