08 Apr 2018

A parked seven tonne truck cuts a lone figure that had not set its tyres outside the production site in a few days.

 

A heap of sand looks untouched over the past few days and six-inch bricks are dry and packed like a lot ready for delivery. Only a single lady clad in blue protective clothing is busy ensuring tidiness within the site. With a wheelbarrow she ferries every useless piece to a dumping site.

 

For about 30 minutes we spent at the site no potential buyer has ever set foot in the premises. However, the business owner is not at pains nor is he worried about it.

 

At this time Moiyabana Brickmolding business is lazy and having been moulding bricks since 1997 courtesy of the then Financial Assistance Policy (FAP), 55-year-old Serowe native Mr Kaisara Ogotseng has grown wiser by the day and can now speculate on the market.

 

He has answers to the slow market. With his experience Mr Ogotseng can speculate on buying patterns of his customers who are mostly the Central District Council and individuals. He gathers that there is a boom during December and then the market goes bearish in January until it suddenly awakens in April.

 

“The market depends on the performance of the national and individuals’ economy,” he said and added that more often the buying pattern fluctuates. He, however, remains bullish.

 

He thinks this is born of the fact that government institutions have strong purchasing power in the new government financial year. Individuals too, he speculates, would have recovered from their festive spending and ready for bigger projects.

 

The business owner is not cagey to talk about the good business he is having despite varying patterns he has observed over the years.

 

In 1997 Moiyabana was an emerging village whose residents needed bricks to build homes. Then residents sought bricks from as far as Serowe, roughly 65 km away, a move that cost them dearly.

 

Such an opportunity presented itself to an enterprising man who established Moiyabana Brick Moulding to deliver an erstwhile indispensable service despite a few people producing own bricks backyard.

 

In his admission there were no competitors then and now. However, village development committee producing bricks of an inferior quality to his with confiscated sands from law-breaking sand miners has become somewhat of a threat.

 

Before enforcement of sand-mining licenses Mr Ogotseng had a diamond within reach, harvesting sands at nearby rivers, moulding and selling bricks at relative ease.

 

Now, Mr Ogotseng with his weather-beaten yet not so long ago registered white seven tonne truck drives from Moiyabana all the way to Mahalapye, via Shoshong, to collect sand.

 

Talking about the challenges, the brick businessman wears a gloomy face and stated that he even drives as far as Palapye to collect quarry sand to manufacture bricks.

 

His market is not big but to satisfy it he engaged services of seven employees following the purchase of a multi brick-molding machine capable of producing 20 000 stock bricks daily. He sought the services of the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) that assisted him with a management plan to qualify for a P45 000 CEDA loan to purchase the machine.

 

Mr Ogotseng, a LEA client for five years, speaks highly of the authority. Without dwelling on how LEA rescued him to acquire the CEDA loan, he tells of how the authority inducted him with such courses as bookkeeping and business management for the betterment of his business.

 

Not only that, the Serowe native paints a positive turnaround that his business realised after seeking business advice from the authority. He spells out how LEA also helped in mitigating problems when encountered.

 

He encouraged the youth to utilise available government services and programmes to uplift their lives.

 

From 1997 until last year, the soft-spoken business man has been relaying on his trusted machine erected about five metres from the site entrance, to mold stock bricks.

 

The owner changes the mask from the initial gloomy and wears a beaming one across his face when he talks about the H1 machine which has been laying golden eggs in his brood since 1997 without breeding much trouble to his pockets.

 

Although the two brick-moulding machines are powered by electricity and rendering the brick production a somewhat capital intensive undertaking, Mr Ogotseng says his men lift the bricks from the mould on pallets to the packing area. Each pallet carries six 4.5 bricks.

 

He reveals that the machine can be such a beast in efficiency that it overpowers his employees to a point where he would sympathise with them.

 

The men at times bunk duty and at other times defy safe work practices thereby delaying manufacturing. However, he has put interventions such as taking them for courses and personally rebuking them so they could appreciate the business dynamics. Ends