PROFILE

 

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When he finished school, due to financial restrains he went to work in a company were his dad had worked his way from being a driver to the Manufacturing Director of that company. He was shown no favours and was employed to load the truck at R40 per day.

While working here Kevin got to know the owner of a plastics factory that was in the next building. The owner impressed with Kevin’s hard work offered him a job in the printing department. He was now earning R6 per hour. Within days of starting this new job Kevin got to learn the art of printing and started training other staff on how to print. The Director of the company was impressed with the leadership shown by Kevin and he promoted him. Kevin ran the Despatch, the Quality and Printing departments. As an 18 year old youngster with a determination to be a better person in life he spoke to the technical Director and asked if he could learn injection moulding in the factory.

He worked the weekends in the factory without pay but in turn received invaluable knowledge and experience. This was part of the deal with the Technical director. Soon he learnt the art and science of injection moulding. Working in the various departments allowed him to gain knowledge. He also bought his own books and studied on his own about plastic raw materials and injection moulding. At the age of 19 years he was promoted to the management team of the company and during that year became the general manager of the company. When two of their biggest customers Defy and Fridge Master took their work away from them, he saw many people lose their jobs for the first time. In total he worked for Tena plastics for 4 years and moved on to Omni Mould as Tena Plastics closed down. He did not take the biggest offer made to him but rather took the offer were he saw potential and hard work.

He joined the management team of Omni Mould which was later to be rebranded as RH Plastics after its takeover. He worked at RH Plastics for 4 years and was promoted as a Director of the company. He also became a junior shareholder of the company.

With lots of hard work in a difficult economy the business was sustained. He was not happy with his thirst for self-improvement though, so Kevin approached the Major shareholder of the company and told him he would like to resign from the company as his ambition is different to that of the company. He was offered to buy the remaining shareholders out which he did over a 6 month period.  Kevin became the owner of RH Plastics.

The equipment was old and outdated and he knew for him to be successful he had to be unique from the rest of the plastic companies.

Kevin married and was expecting his first child in 2006, whilst forming his company GPS Plastics in the same year.

With exciting times ahead, he bought 3 new injection moulding machines from Taiwan and this allowed him to be competitive in the industry and because they were energy efficient machines it allowed him to be competitive at the time when electricity costs were on the rise. Seeing the trend of increasing manufacturing costs he decided to replace more of the older machines with servo machines which were even more energy efficient. This proved to be a master stroke as he was now more competitive then all his competition in the market as he had taken the initial plunge of exploring the servo energy saving machines before others did in the market. He continued to replace outdated equipment and invested in the plant to obtain more equipment. Steadily growing the equipment of the company to over R30 million. He did not want history to repeat it’s self with the Defy and Fridge master debacle which saw them lose their business in his early working career so he decided to control his own destiny by investing in his own moulds to service the medical, transport, construction and houseware market.

This strategy allowed him to sell his products on a COD basis or 7 day, 14 day and 30 day terms instead of the industry norm of 30 days from statement. This allowed Kevin to generate cash flow for the business and expand the business at the same time without the financial burdens. His product line continued to give the company the required cash flow and the custom moulding side of the business ( where he moulds for different customers ) that revenue is generated on a 30 days from statement.

He has grown the company into 15 injection moulding machines, pad printing and silk screen facility. GPS Plastics also have a maintenance tool room on site.

Kevin says his pride and passion is the setup of the assembly division. “We produce kettles, water buckets and vacuum cleaners in the injection moulding plant. These plastic parts go to the assembly division and gets assembled. We assemble Pineware kettles, Salton kettles, and Russel Hobbs kettles and Hoover vacuum cleaners. We produce and assemble over 90 000 vacuum cleaners a year and we produce and assemble over 1million kettles a year. We also produce and print over 3 million rulers each year. We also produce Elasto plaster containers for medical industry”