JOTUN PAINTS SA: Strategy Masterstrokes Take Jotun Across Southern Africa

At the end of 2021, Jotun Paints South Africa was in a strong place, bouncing back from the Covid slowdown thanks to bright and long-lasting relationships with customers in niche industry sectors. The company told Enterprise Africa of a record year amidst challenging conditions.

Then, in 2022, with a new MD at the helm, the company began to rollout a new, lean strategy in the search of long-term growth. Jotun Paints is a global coatings operation, headquartered in Norway, with operations across more than 100 countries. Active in South Africa with manufacturing and sales for more than 25 years, the local operation is important to the group. Martin Trane Ibsen is keen on improvement across the business as he looks to engage opportunities beyond South Africa’s borders, taking on prospects all over southern Africa.

A new head office in Cape Town, an improved factory, new products, and a host of new internal initiatives are all being rolled out in a very busy time.

“We started out two years ago from a very strong foundation, and with a very strong team. We laid out a 10-year plan and we are busy executing that now, one year at a time. When you set yourself a vision like that, it is a bit of dreamwork. But it does give you better clarity on the journey on a yearly basis,” he says.

THE COMMON GOAL

Jotun Paints SA is an industry leader in the marine protection space, providing protection and wide colour choice for a demanding set of clients. The company is also strong in the industrial space where energy and petrochemical organisations require a significantly stronger paint and coating offering that acts as long-term asset. To compete with the top players in the industry, including other major international brands, Jotun invests internally.

“Communication through the entire team is incredibly important and we are a team spread across the entire country, and we now have people on the ground in Angola. Ensuring everyone is aware of the common goal is essential,” explains Ibsen.

Fostering a culture of shared values and a want to achieve a shared goal is not easy but Jotun does so through proactive HR policies that others overlook. In particular, the company focuses payment of bonuses around collective successes to remove any conflict and put the needs of the customer are the top of everyone’s agenda.

“There is a tendency in sales in Africa for people to be heavily incentivised by commission,” says Ibsen. “We do things differently and we pay good salaries. There is also a common bonus system for all employees. We either succeed or fail as a team. It is also about encouraging cooperation. We cannot work for our client – who might be an engineering firm in Johannesburg – if the Jo’burg rep does not want to share the contact with our Cape Town team for fear they will lose commission. We are in business-to-business, our customers certainly overlap between our locations. We believe this is one of our strong points as it differentiates us from others here. Everyone here, right to the factory floor, gets their bonus if they achieve common goals.”

At group level, the company drives four values: loyalty, care, respect and boldness. It is from here that the culture spreads and Ibsen, a Jotun veteran who has worked across the world for the company, is keen to deepen the uptake of shared values in southern Africa. He says that investing in people from an early stage makes it easier to embed those values and encouraging them to flourish across the team.

“We are expanding quite fast, and continuing to attract talent is important,” he highlights. “By the end of the year, we want to launch a graduate program where we can bring on new people. We have for many years had a learnership program. We want to develop a similar program but focus on graduates where we can teach different parts of the business to try and secure talent direct from universities. When we see high-performers in the learnership program, we do our utmost to retain them at the end.”

Logistics, Warehouse and CSD Manager, Enba Govender helps to deliver the program: “Because we are in the chemical industry we look at students with a chemical background and we bring them on to offer practical, hands-on experience. Colleges provide the theoretical knowledge and we provide the industry experience, and the whole program is supported by government. Last year, we had 14 leaners between the factory and warehouse,” he says.

“Further internal training that we have started this year is management and supervisory training. Our HR team arranged this with an external training provider to upskill them for the wider industry, more than just Jotun.”

Training in this way feed into the organic growth strategy developed at group level and followed by Jotun businesses around the world. Regional and local operations enjoy a significant degree of autonomy and the group believes this to be key to its global success. Building on local knowledge and competence is at the core of the business model. Importantly, hiring and training effectively in local markets allows for high levels of mobility within the organisation as everyone understands the shared vision of Jotun. This is evidenced by Gareth Alcock, who spoke to Enterprise Africa in 2022, who has moved to Dubai to lead sales in another Jotus market.

STRONG COVERAGE

The key market sectors for Jotun globally are marine coatings, protective coasting, power coatings, and decorative paints. Across southern Africa, marine and protective are the premier offerings. The company is a recognised industry leader, and Ibsen is keen to introduce new products while maintaining its existing strength.

Drawing on global expertise, a recent introduction to the southern African market is advanced floor protection. Highly successful in other international markets, Ibsen has been hoping to introduce floor products for some time but was also keen to launch at the right time, when the business had capacity.

“We will be launching our new product series for the flooring market this year,” he says. “It is something we have been working on the for last couple of years, but we needed the operations in place before we could bring the product to market. We needed the space and capability to produce the products. Jotun has been big in flooring in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for many years, but it is not something that was introduced to southern Africa. The biggest challenge is that we had the business plan, but we needed to get hold of the correct raw materials and that is not easy with today’s supply chain world and the legacy of the Covid days.”

Southern Africa will not receive the full range of flooring products, rather a dedicated choice that is applicable for local markets. The company follows global trends when it comes to new products, and this is typically driven by HQ in Norway.  

In the marine market, where Jotun holds significant share, it is looking to adjust product sizes to suit the multiple different markets that exist around the southern African coast. The company is not only keen to show strength in the large shipyards, dealing with big vessels, but also in the smaller yards around the seashore, where smaller boats require lasting protection.

“Our customers, distributors, are asking for smaller sizes to service smaller boat yards. Here, there are big shipyards in Durban and Cape Town but there are also a lot of other smaller slipways servicing fishing boats along the coast and we would like to deliver a better product assortment to suit that market. This is not new products; it’s about making some of the can sizes more adaptable for that market. We have distributors who work in these markets around the coast and we want to help them service these markets better,” Ibsen explains.

Again, this adjustment requires input from an engaged supply chain of both local and international partners.

STORAGE SPACE

A challenge for Jotun Paints SA was, for some time, the ability to store raw materials and finished goods. At the company’s former site, capacity was an issue. But at the end of 2023, the company moved into a new facility between Cape Town and Stellenbosch.

The 5713m² space sees new storage and office space supplied by Growthpoint Properties with impressive customisations that allow Jotun to align with global standards.

“When you make paint, it’s like cooking,” smiles Ibsen. “You don’t need a lot of space on the stove to mix in the pot, but you need a lot of space on the counter to prepare.”

“All the ingredients that go into the pot take up a lot of space,” agrees Govender.

“We have a very large number of raw materials, and that requires an awful lot of space. The space for production is not the biggest issue. The space for storing raw materials and finished goods is the bigger challenge,” Ibsen states.

When the company moved into its new site, Jotun not only unlocked capacity, it also advanced safety standards in what is now 4-Star Design and Built Green Star certified.

“We have a global standard for safety and even if our factory was completely compliant according to South African regulations, we have decided to upgrade the firefighting and security standards in our factory so that we meet those international levels,” says Govender, adding that the company has also invested heavily in new material handling equipment for its warehouses to address environmental targets, making 80% of the fleet electric instead of diesel. “That will bring about a saving for us in the long run,” he says.

Ibsen is proud of this result, and he says that energy usage across the new space is being closely monitored as Jotun reports on its environmental impact in the same way that it does for safety and security.

“On the energy front, it is a real challenge in South Africa. Load shedding is a big issue. Our new head office has an agreement with the landlord that by 2026, a fair amount of the energy must be produced from solar. Globally, Jotun is investing heavily in reducing the carbon footprint. There are clear targets when we talk about reductions in emissions, and they are quite severe while we are still growing. Selling more and growing quickly while reducing your carbon footprint is tough. The more we sell, the more we work, the more waste we create and the more energy we use. We need to find ways to reduce our energy consumption or use more green energy, and that transition is happening right now.”

The group’s goals are ambitious. Reducing carbon footprint by 50% by 2030 against a 2017 baseline and 70% of the electricity used to come from renewable electricity. This, says Ibsen, is not about comparing Jotun to others or benchmarking against the industry, it’s about using the transition as an opportunity to be better.

QUALITY PARTNERSHIPS

As the company’s focus on expanding through southern Africa continues, it leans on the global organisation to assist in the development of a thriving supply chain while also forming local relationships that are vital when it comes to keeping customers happy.

“We have partnered with some of the more reliable freight forwarders in the region to cover the west and east coast of Africa. Locally, we have partnered with some reliable transporters who can offer quick turnaround times and support our business with 24- or 48-hour turnaround times, delivering to specific areas. We had to ensure we were partnering with companies that have the infrastructure to support our growth ambitions,” explains Govender.

Currently, 80% of raw materials are sourced through imports as the company aims for stringent quality and uniformity standards set out by the Jotun group. “We do have local suppliers of raw materials and packaging, including the likes of Steelpack, and we have those that carry stock for us. As and when we have an increase in demand, we can meet that quickly because we can get fast delivery of that stock,” Govender adds.

Ibsen explains that the supply chain must have quality engrained for Jotun to achieve its own standards, which are world leading.

“The thing with paint,” he says, “is that most people who have done chemistry at university should be able to make paint. The difficulty is not making paint. The difficulty is making the exact same high-performing product everywhere around the world, every day. We are dependent on global agreements that our group forms with raw materials suppliers that ensure volume and quality.”

This concentration on quality product is complemented by a high level attention to quality service. “It is key to make sure our customers are happy with the service and turnaround time that we provide,” says Govender. “Personally, my goal is to drive return business through quality experiences. We have to make sure we have the right stock, at the right time, in the right place so that we can supply quickly. It is challenging, but quality service is our objective.”

In 2024, the positivity at Jotun Paints SA certainly continues. Growth has been smooth and calm, new relationships have been mutually beneficial, and paints in use by customers continue to do the job. Ibsen is confident of another good year.

“We have ambitious growth plan which follows the Jotun global strategy. We are focusing on marine and protective products. We are continuing to develop new partnerships in the markets we serve. We are strong in Namibia, we have been present in Botswana for a while, we have been exporting to Madagascar for many years, and we want to develop our footprint in these places. We also want to improve our footprint in South Africa. We have done well in certain areas but there are others where we believe we can develop ourselves. We will carry on investing in people to support our growth.”