Queenstown is home to Ken Clark’s two businesses: Crickley Dairy and Twizza, which also distributes soft drinks out of its state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Cape Town, and in Middelburg in Mpumalanga.
Starting with five cows and one employee in 1980, Ken Clark has built two successful businesses employing more than 1 000 people. The one is Crickley Dairy, an institution in the Eastern Cape, and the second is Twizza, a carbonated soft drinks business with a distribution network spanning across South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique.
How did the dairy business start?
My dad was a sheep and cattle farmer in the Dordrecht district, and had a small dairy. I took a liking to the dairy as a youngster. I went to the army, came back and worked for my dad for a short time. I’m very single-minded and we bumped heads a bit, so I eventually opted to go on my own.
So in 1980, I started with just five cows, and tried to start building a little herd. Within a couple of years, I was the biggest milk producer in the Dordrecht district, and started looking at selling milk into the Transkei. Somebody else was buying milk from me from time to time, and so that sparked an idea. That’s how Crickley started – in a very small, 80m2 rented building. At that point we were just trading in raw milk, to be honest.
We grew with time, adding fruit juices to our product offering and moving to bigger facilities, until we eventually took over the property in Queenstown where we are situated now.
How did Twizza start?
In 2002, I started looking into carbonated soft drinks (CSDs). I went to Germany, Poland and Italy, looking at equipment, and put a plan together in 2003. Within five months, we were running a 24/7 operation.
The next October, we put in our second line, which had a bit more capacity. In 2008, we put a further line into Queenstown. This time it was a substantially larger line, producing 36 000 litres an hour, and with that base, we started distributing to niche customers around the country.
この記事は Finweek English の 7 June 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Finweek English の 7 June 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
THE HEALTH OF SA'S MEDICAL SCHEMES
As the Covid-19 pandemic abates, finweek takes a look at the financial performance of some of the largest players.
The effect of Gilbertson's departure
With Ntsimbintle Holdings now the major shareholder of Jupiter Mines, it could change SA’s manganese industry.
Making money from music
Why investors are increasingly drawn to the music industry.
Conviction is key
Sandy Rheeder plays a critical role in Mukuru’s mission to open up financial services to the emerging consumer market in Africa through tailor-made technology solutions and platforms.
The post-pandemic toolkit
How CFOs can use technology to support growth.
Big city living exodus
Mini cities like Waterfall City and Steyn City are redefining city-style apartment living.
Big compact, big value
Handsome, with a hefty level of standard specification, the roomy Haval Jolion compact crossover is a great value proposition.
On barriers to entry
There are various ways in which a company or sector can achieve competitive dominance. They usually make for good investments.
Fear and greed in one index
To buck the trend, when markets are hot or cold, is a tough thing to do. However, it can deliver solid returns.
Africa's largest data centre facility coming soon
Vantage Data Centers plans to invest over R15bn for its first African data centre facility in Attacq’s Waterfall City.
