ChemCity facilitates BEE sale of Cirebelle

19 Jul '07

3 min read

Sasol's small business incubator, ChemCity, has notched up another success with the sale, for an undisclosed amount, of cosmetic wax bead manufacturer Cirebelle to a broad-based black economic empowerment consortium.

Known as Bukekayo, the consortium composes private black business Letsema Ventures (26%), trade union investment company CEPPWAWU Investments (26%), entrepreneurs Stefan Roux and Louis Klue (20% each), and a staff share option scheme (8%).

Cirebelle, which means 'beauty wax' in French, employs 18 full time workers. With an annual turnover of R11 million, the company makes speciality wax products in South Africa and markets these to the international cosmetic industry.

"Cirebelle is the only company in the country that makes wax beads and specialty waxes for the cosmetic industry. These are of such a high quality that they're sought after by international beauty giants such as Unilever," says new Cirebelle MD David Gibson.

Yet, like so many other start-ups, the company almost did not survive. Cirebelle started out in 2001 as an initiative of Sasol Wax, which saw the initiative as a way of adding value to the wax raw materials it was producing from the Fischer-Trospch petrochemical process.

But with its focus on its core business rather than on this specific small scale speciality segment, Sasol Wax decided to make this business available for ChemCity to restructure and sell to a BEE entity. ChemCity is Sasol's chemical business incubator, which focuses on small business development and job creation in the downstream chemical sector.

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