UNYAZI SALES & SERVICES

Sthembile Tshikosi is the founding director of uNyazi Sales & Services, a Cape Town-based industrial services company founded in 2015.

Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, Tshikosi started her career in the classroom, lecturing electrical engineering subjects at an FET College in Mpumalanga.

In 2007, Tshikosi relocated to Cape Town to join Eskom, where she occupied various roles. Seven years later, she moved to the oil and gas sector, joining EnerMech as a quality assurance manager.  This was followed by a brief stint at the Coega Development Corporation in a similar position.

Tshikosi’s vision is to create employment through training and development and to ensure that uNyazi delivers products and services that are on par with international standards.

“Any company that deals with us knows that we’ve got a standard in place,” says Tshikosi. “They’ve got confidence that everything from procuring to quality release to dispatch is done according to the system and then there is that trust, that if something goes wrong in a plant they can trace it all the way back to the source, which is the original manufacturer.”

uNyazi specialises in sales and servicing of industrial equipment ranging from valves and pumps to instrumentation. “We also do onsite work and industrial services like painting and blasting, corrosion protection and non-destructive testing.”

The company recently partnered with a global valve manufacturer based in America, with plants in Dubai.

“This means we are going to have to do a lot more servicing and we’ll need bigger premises, which comes with more staff,” says Tshikosi. “We currently employ 12 people, but will be expanding soon. We will employ about six new people – three valve technicians and two senior staffers to do the business development. The new staff will be here as of the first quarter of 2018, and that number will just keep growing as we acquire new markets.”

About operating her business from Cape Town, Tshikosi says: “Cape Town is a beautiful city. The minute I arrived in Cape Town, I told myself ‘one day I would like to work here’. It’s beautiful, there’s nothing not to like. It’s a very vibrant and a fast-growing city.”

Tshikosi describes Cape Town as a city of opportunity. “There’s a lot of investment and huge development happening currently, especially with the desalination and alternative energies – like your wind power and solar panels,” she says. “ So I think Cape Town is really the place to be. There are a lot of future opportunities as well, which means we have to position ourselves in a way that when those opportunities materialise we are in a position to serve the industry.”