Company Announcement - The SA Paint Manufacturing Association and Jack's Paints have agreed to cooperate to boost SAPMA's drive to increase training and boost skills levles in the coatings industry. Deryck Spence, executive director  of SAPMA, says further delays caused by municipal 'red tape', thwarted SAPMA's plans to build its own on-site training centre for its training arm, The SA Paint Industry Training Institute, in Bedfordview. However, SAPMA found a willing ally in Jack's Paints.

"Jack's Paints, and its 75 retail outlets throughout South Africa, are now also SAPMA members. The group has furthermore immediately thrown its weight behind SAPMA's training mission by agreeing to  let SAPITI share Jack's' facilities at its Training Academy in Cleveland, Johannesburg. Jack's'  lecture room plus its laboratory completely totally meet SAPITI's requirements and the gesture to make the facilities available for coatings industry training is even more significant in that it means that the allocated government funding for SAPITI training equipment and accessories can now finally be accessed," Spence explained.

SAPMA was advised late last year that the Chemical Industries Education and Training Authority had approved a Discretionary Grant to SAPMA for the operational requirements of the Training Centre - including all high-technology equipment and studios to facilitate inter-active video conferencing tuition in multi-faceted Coatings Technology. Also funded by CHIETA will be specialised laboratory equipment as well as equipment for practical training,  extensive tuition material, furniture, fittings, office equipment, computerised student data bases, and  an electronic assessment question bank.

"Thanks to Jack's' inspiring gesture we will now be able to install all of this equipment at the Jack's Training Academy at 9 Drostdy Street in Cleveland and hope to start training there as soon as possible," he added. Gerhard Waldauer, MD of Jacks said: "We at Jack’s Paint are very proud of our Industry-leading Training Academy, and the synergy shared by both SAPMA and Jack’s Paint’s focusses on product and application training. So the opportunity to share the facility will provide benefits to the whole industry through coatings skills development."