Having graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a BA (Hons) Degree in Entrepreneurship and Business Leadership in 2018, Mandy Gopolang wasted little time putting her newly-acquired business know-how into practice.
Working as an assistant accountant at a local water purification company, the young go-getter pounced when she spotted a gaping, bottle-sized hole in the industry.
Diving straight in, in July 2019, the Majwaneng native started Gop’Bottles, a plastic bottle manufacturing company based in Molepolole under the Local Enterprises Authority (LEA) Incubation.
“After the government stopped the importation of water [1st August 2018], there was a huge rising of water businesses coming up but the complementary products, the water bottles, were still being imported from other countries. There was a huge gap, sometimes a shortage of plastic bottles and this was the key driver to me starting Gop’Bottles,” the 26-year-old business woman tells Voice Money.
Customers vary from weddings, funerals, festivals, Sunday soccer teams, corporate events, water companies, as well as ginger and juice businesses.
Backed by the Youth Development Fund (YDF), Gop’Bottles produces bottles ranging in size from 50ml to 2L, with 500ml and 1.5L being the best-sellers.
“At the time of business commencement, after careful research and development, we came to the conclusion that there was a big demand on those specific sizes,” explains Gopolang, who sources the bulk of her packaging and raw materials locally, but occasionally goes shopping in South Africa and China when shortages arise in BW.
Gopolang and her team, which currently sits at three employees, with extra labourers hired to fill big orders, pride themselves on using top quality material for their bottles – PET (polyethylene terephthalate), a type of clear, durable and versatile plastic that is also recyclable.
Although their plant boasts the potential to pop-out 800 bottles an hour, monthly production currently sits at around 15, 000 – 20, 000 units.
“As the business grows, we are going into manufacturing different shapes and sizes to cater for new demands such as sanitizer bottles, cooking oil,” reveals Gop’Bottles boss, who charges P210 for a batch of a hundred 1.5L bottles and P190 for the same amount in 500ml.
With the company’s five-year anniversary fast approaching, Gopolang believes this is a milestone well worth celebrating.
Reeling off some of their notable achievements, she cites, “Working with major companies in the plastic industry such as KPI and Starpack, employee retention despite the challenges the business had to go through, self-discovery as a female entrepreneur in a male dominated industry, support from locals and sustainability and growth of the business.”
At the other end of the pool, Golopang lists: cash flow, securing funds and managing rising costs as some of the mounting challenges her business faces.
A delegate at the ‘Forbes 30 under 30 summit’ back in 2022, the versatile youth, who counts motivational speaking and singing amongst her many talents, made the most of the international stage to push her product.
“The business did get noticed and became more visible after that experience. I also managed to build good business relationships with relevant stakeholders in my business, such as recycling companies,” says Gopolang.
The passionate Christian is quick to thank LEA for their help in guiding Gop’Bottles through turbulent waters.
“LEA also assist with market linkages and market access. They also have interventions such as branding, new product development, trade show participation like at the Global Expo, just to name a few,” she adds.
Going forward, the ambitious entrepreneur wants to take ‘Gop to the top’ and establish her enterprise as the leading local plastic manufacturer in Botswana. She also plans to diversify into more plastic products, setting herself a timeline of five years to achieve both.
“It will definitely export to other countries and will create employment in various fields and be able to recycle bottles as we go green. That is the future of Gop’Bottles. The manufacturing sector in Botswana is quite slow but it definitely has a lot of potential for growth. It has the power to cause radical change in Botswana’s GDP, hence why the sector is one the top priorities in the National Development Agenda. A lot of employment could be created from this sector!” gushes Gopolang.
