The need for a concrete specialist has given birth to a local enterprise in which 11 employees are putting their experience to use in a local setting, in line with Copper 360’s community investment approach.
The opportunity to secure work closer to home was driven home to four associates, who had just completed project work in Angola, by an advertisement, which resulted in Henrico Fortuin, now a director of the new enterprise, to quote on the Copper 360 project.
This gave birth to Nama Power HFI, the personnel of which all hail from the Nama Khoi district, which embraces areas in and around the Copper 360 plant, including Nababeep, Okiep, Concordia and Bergsig.
“We’re a small concrete specialist contractor and we were hired by Copper 360 to complete various concrete works,” Nama Power GM/administrator Joseph Louw explained to Mining Weekly.
A project completed recently included the laying of a concrete base, with columns, plinth and a bund wall.
“So, everything from building of the framework boxing to fixing the steel to help support the base and then the finishing and or floating of the final concrete,” explained Louw, whose doubling of GM/administrator roles is widely mirrored in Nama Power, in which directors perform dualistic to even quintuple functions, one being financial manager/bookkeeper and another project manager, steel fixer, shutter hand, concrete hand and general worker.
Even though the company is very much in its infancy, Louw hopes that its work ethic, work quality and speed of delivery will be enough to take the company beyond its Copper 360 assignments well into other new mining developments that are on the horizon in the Northern Cape in general and the Namakwa region in particular.