Background

J Strikland Africa is the licensed importer for ethnic hair care products manufactured in Memphis, Teneesee by J Strikland & Company. This trade agreement was established in 1994 and the company has grown its’ market share in the ethnic hair care market importing and distributing a high quality product which was soon also exported to other countries in Africa. Being a dollar based product, the trading disadvantage for the company was soon realised and the unstable rand currency played a major role in the fortunes of their business. Anderson Engineering was approached back in 2012 to provide a budget quotation on a locally manufactured hair care processing plant. This was used as the basis for justifying a new business case in which product would be manufactured locally. The following 3 years were required to obtain business funding as well as establishing the framework for the royalty agreement with the parent company in Memphis. During 2014, an in-house study was undertaken on the processing plant in Memphis, and sufficient processing knowledge was extracted to design the plant required for J Strikland Africa. This plant was to be located in Westmead, Pinetown, into an existing company owned building.

The project

Anderson Engineering put forward several improvements to the findings of the study on the Memphis processing plant. These were proposed and accepted. These were specifically to ensure consistent quality and automate the procedure to manufacture the hair care products. There are two types of product manufactured at the plant. They are water based and petroleum jelly based hair care products. The project authorisation was achieved in July 2015 and manufacture of the plant together with deliver, installation and commissioning, required a further 6 month period.

The project was a full turnkey solution which included the following equipment:

•Anderson 3,000 l Contramix

•A premix vessel

•Water based product manufacturing vessel

•3 Storage tanks (6,000 litre each)

•Bull petroleum jelly storage tank (2 x 30,000 litre each)

•Chilling plant

•Hot water generator

The plant has now been running since May 2016.

Sadha Naidoo, Operations Manager from J Strikland Africa, noted that their new plant is small, compact and easy to clean but with the capacity to do really large volumes, which is important for their growth potential. “From our first run we were also really impressed with the speed of which we manufactured which is excellent for output, as well as efficiencies such as electricity and other resources,” said Mr Naidoo. “With Anderson Engineering thorough understanding of the process at the outset of the project, meant we were able to eliminate all the slack and excesses processes which not only saves money but time and set up costs of the plant,” he concluded.