South Africa: From Bold Ambition to Industrial Success – The Pavati Plastics Story

When Pavati Plastics Southern Africa set out to build a black women-led manufacturing business, the ambition was to develop a sustainable enterprise capable of responding to market needs, developing new products and replacing products previously imported into South Africa. Today, Pavati Plastics is a 100% black-owned and black-managed company, with 51% black women ownership, and has evolved from a service business into a manufacturing enterprise with capabilities spanning extrusion, printing and specialised packaging. The company’s expansion was supported by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) through the Black Industrialists Scheme (BIS), which approved a R50 million matching grant in March 2021 for its capital expansion project. Between 2015 and 2021, Pavati transitioned from a service business into manufacturing, with its expansion focused on building local manufacturing capacity and replacing specialised products that had previously been imported. “Between 2015 and 2021, Pavati Plastics evolved from a service business into manufacturing. We were building a black-managed, sustainable packaging entity with capabilities in extrusion, recycling and speciali