Amid the efforts to attract, progress and retain women across key sectors of the economy, rail sleeper and infrastructure products manufacturer Colossal Concrete Products CEO Gwen Mahuma-Madida highlights the imperative of providing greater opportunities for female participation in the sector, noting this is a lodestar in the company’s strategic considerations.

“There are significant opportunities for women and youth arising in the concrete product manufacturing industry, owing to the country’s social transformation agenda, and most of the companies that we supply to are aware of this,” Mahuma-Madida highlights.

She adds that the company strives to hire women across various departments of the business, including in administrative and executive roles.

In viewing the various aspects of the business, which includes the production, manufacturing and supply of railway and other products, Colossal stresses the sector’s readiness to embrace female participation.

Mahuma-Madida, however, highlights the importance of awareness and receptiveness among women to ensure that they can identify suitable opportunities for meaningful participation: “If you are in this industry and your eyes are open to opportunities, the sky is the limit . . . there are always avenues for entry and participation.”

Mahuma-Madida and COO Mmapitso Kiewiet have been involved in the rail and infrastructure sector since 2012, and have personally supplied various products used in rail and infrastructure, ranging from steel to customised sheet metal, and now, precast concrete.

Colossal also has sufficient capacity to service large-scale mining and industrial infrastructure projects.

Further, Colossal aims to equip women in the company with supply chain, procurement, dispatching and various other operational opportunities including in areas such as safety and quality control.

“We believe that what we do can be done by anyone, if they are presented with the right opportunities, training and experiences, so where possible, we give preference to women and we have mentorship programmes that prioritise women, giving them the opportunity to be a part of our business or to be part of our supply chain,” Mahuma-Madida says.

With an eye on continuity and equipping women with skills for the future, Colossal also has a learnership programme, through which women learn about different aspects of the business.

Key to Colossal’s survival is having sufficient ‘financial muscle’ to invest in and develop its operations. Mahuma-Madida notes the white male-dominated history of this sector and the historical difficulty associated with accessing large contracts as women – while emphasising that this seems to have changed as she and Kiewiet have been positively received throughout the industry.

She adds that the company would welcome consistency in the number of contracts that it receives from the public sector, as the more infrastructure projects Colossal can supply, the more people the business can employ and more buoyant its business outlook.

“Growing a business and increasing job creation is a balancing act and we need to access new business in order to sustain and grow the business,” Mahuma-Madida adds.

She and Kiewiet believe that the ability to empower one woman could have significant socioeconomic benefits.

“For every woman you employ, you are feeding about ten people, as women generally provide for more than just their immediate family. If you assist a woman, you are assisting a community,” Mahuma-Madida declares.

When Mahuma-Madida and Kiewiet assumed the leadership of Colossal in 2021, the company had 60 employees. Currently, its operations in Gauteng and the Northern Cape, employ about 200 people.