Recent challenges in the South African mining industry have prompted Bidvest Laundry Group to introduce another client service option that aims to improve mine owners' empowerment credentials while providing a boost to small-scale entrepreneurs. The Bidvest Group subsidiary's "Laundry in a Box" concept is a turnkey industrial laundry housed in shipping containers and situated on a client's premises. With financing always a stumbling block for prospective entrepreneurs, especially disadvantaged ones, possibly the most innovative aspect of the "Laundry in a Box" concept is that Bidvest Laundry Group will provide 100% financing for sufficiently impressive entrepreneurs.

The company will also provide successful candidates with ongoing managerial and operational support. With a primary focus on providing industrial laundry services to the mining industry, Bidvest Laundry Group is interested in engaging with individuals and organisations who are either already running a laundry at a mining installation or who can facilitate access to such installations. In return, a potential six-figure investment by the country's leading industrial laundry group is a distinct possibility. Lionel Jacobs, Director of Bidvest Laundry Group, said: We hope to expand our industrial laundry footprint in a socially-responsible way that creates partners out of people who would previously have been employees. By engaging with local entrepreneurs, we will be able to develop communities as we build a culture of entrepreneurship."

According to Andrew Coates, Sales Director of Bidvest Laundry Group, placing industrial laundries in shipping containers on mines and which are owned and managed by members of the local community helps solve a myriad of challenges. "By enabling this investment, the mines improve their empowerment scores and generate goodwill. The miners are more satisfied because people in their own community are generating an income by ensuring the miners go underground in clean and dry work overalls. Finally, because modern industrial laundries are both technology and people-intensive, each "Laundry in a Box" investment by Bidvest Laundry Group creates dozens of income opportunities," explained Mr Coates.

"Ideally, we would like to partner with community-orientated cooperatives that benefit as many local people living around the mines as possible. We are interested in creating reasonable profits for many different people, as opposed to creating super profits for just one or two select individuals. Laundries are a grassroots business and we want to help grassroots people to live a better life by giving them the tools to do so," Mr Coates said. He emphasized the value of transparent partnerships in the new roll-out model and said that a particular industrial laundry contract with a certain mine would be held by the local cooperative Bidvest Laundry Group chose to partner with. "The cooperative would employ all staff and then subcontract certain functions to Bidvest Laundry Group, such as maintenance of the machinery, or the provision of the required day-to-day consumables," said Mr Coates.

Sustainability is assured because Bidvest Laundry Group acts as an ongoing mentor to its local partners. "Most new businesses fail because of funding and mentorship issues. We provide the solution to both challenges with Laundry in a Box. "Not only is the "Laundry in a Box" concept easy to install practically anywhere we are able to find a suitable business partner to mentor, but the whole concept comes uniquely wrapped in an aesthetically pleasing bespoke shipping container. An industrial laundry with these credentials, and which is adaptable to different laundry volumes, is unheard of in South Africa," concluded Mr Coates.