Learning and development is a key element in ensuring Mpact remains competitive. In fact, fostering a thriving economy necessitates a skilled workforce with appropriate competencies and qualifications. Moreover, people development and training enhance an individual’s employability.
Mpact follows a ground-up approach, ranging from awarding bursaries through to apprenticeships and learnerships, and ongoing on-the-job training and development initiatives. Central to these efforts is our e-learning platform, the Mpact Academy. The focus of this case study is, however, on our apprenticeships and learnerships.
The Group is committed to providing youth with opportunities, offering 260 skills development and work experience opportunities annually through our apprentice and learnership programmes, which are NQF-aligned and focused on PDI candidates. More than 94% of candidates in these programmes are from previously disadvantaged backgrounds and over 31% are Black women. We simultaneously improve the industryrelevant skills pool through these opportunities.
In partnership with Skills Education Training Authorities (SETA), Mpact sponsors 50 unemployed and disabled learners to support skills development in unemployed youth. The programme aims to equip candidates with the skills they need to start their own businesses and generate an income. It starts by teaching learners’ technical skills to manufacture items of clothing and other items before moving onto relevant skills such as training in business administration and entrepreneurship.
The majority of participants in the Group are Black African learners, and Mpact covers the training expenses along with providing a monthly stipend for each student in the programme.
In 2023, Mpact took proactive steps to enhance awareness at a grassroots level by participating in the Future Me World of Work Expo in Cape Town. This initiative aimed to provide young individuals with insights into the packaging industry. Approximately 500 students visited the Mpact stand, expressing keen interest in learning more about Mpact, the career paths relevant to the Group, and the educational fields that would make them eligible for employment.
However, it is our long-term, broad-based apprenticeships and learnership that deliver a sustained and significant impact. These include the Felixton Paper Mill’s Engineers-in-Training (EITs) programme, where EITs are recruited for a two-year intensive practical training programme involving departmental projects, tasks and improvement initiatives in their areas of specialisation. This initiative has proven to be the cornerstone of the mill’s success over the years as the EITs get absorbed into the operation and continue to add value in their respective roles.
The Felixton Paper Mill also hosts a pre-production learner programme, with learners embarking on a 10-week pretraining opportunity, following which some are elected to join the Production Learner Programme. This year five candidates were inducted into the latter. Over the years, the mill has had 44 learners participate in the programme.
To raise awareness this year, the mill hosted 70 students from the Faculty of Engineering at the Mangosuthu University of Technology in Umlazi, Durban. The students were treated to an educational tour of the Felixton Paper Mill, aimed at providing them with first-hand understanding of how the theoretical skills they have acquired could be applied in real-world scenarios. The comprehensive visit encompassed the key areas within the mill starting from the weighbridge, solar plant, waste yard, RCF plant, effluent plant, engineering workshops, power plant, PM3 and the auto warehouse.
Springs Paper Mill also hosts a number of apprenticeship programmes, and this year, the mill welcomed two new Fitter and Turner apprentices, who will train at the mill for three years, and 11 new pre-production learners. Our Mkhondo Paper Mill recruits engineering apprentices to create a pool of potential future artisans for the mill. This year the latter selected apprentices via a series of rigorous assessments with over 100 applicants applying to participate in the programme. To date, more than 69 and 82 candidates have participated in these initiatives at the two mills, respectively.
Each year, Mpact apprentices show outstanding results, and this year was no different with the top honour going to Nehemiah Sands, a Single Facer Operator at Mpact Kuilsriver. Nehemiah was named the top student in the country overall, for obtaining the highest results (90%), when completing his TT2 Corrugated Board Manufacturing and Machine Minding Apprenticeship in April last year.
Recognising that tertiary education can provide an important gateway to employment, in 2022 the Felixton Paper Mill launched a financial assistance programme, which pays the registration fees for community members seeking to enrol at tertiary education institutions.
This programme aims to provide local students with access to registration fees, which are often prohibitively expensive and beyond the means of their families. A cap of R10,000 per applicant has been set, with no criteria other than that the applicant must be from the mill’s neighbouring communities and must have been accepted to study at the tertiary institution in question. Once accepted at the institution, students will need to apply for a bursary from another institution or for financial assistance from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
The mill also continues to strengthen its relationship with the local Madlebe Tribal Authority; and this year, the mill enrolled community members for a two-week skills programme with a local training institution, which consists of hand tools, power tools, basic rigging/slinging/lifting of loads, basic firefighting, manual handling and gas cutting. These are the essential skills required by the local industry during maintenance shutdowns.