Caz Johnson from NCINCI NDIQALA was the third-place winner of the 2025 Bellville Join Stage Up Enterprise Programme, and represents a brand new era of enterprise leaders targeted on techniques, neighborhood upliftment and sustainability.
Raised in a household that all the time discovered a strategy to make issues work, Caz’s early profession in admin and operations formed his pure inclination towards construction, problem-solving and other people. These foundations would later develop into important to rising NCINCI NDIQALA, a family-founded recycling and waste-management firm with a robust lesson behind it.
Small Beginnings: A Household Enterprise Constructed From Survival
NCINCI NDIQALA, which means “Small Beginnings”, was born in 2014 throughout a time of immense hardship. After each of Caz’s dad and mom, Jerome and Wendy Johnson, have been retrenched, the household needed to create one thing from nothing. With a borrowed bakkie and sheer dedication, they started accumulating cardboard to feed the family.
What began as necessity quickly revealed a spot: many communities and companies lacked dependable, compliant and accredited waste-management options. By 2019, Caz stepped in to assist formalise and scale the enterprise, setting the muse for the high-impact firm it’s right this moment.
Waste, Recycling & Actual Group Worth
Right now, NCINCI NDIQALA is a specialised recycling and waste-management firm providing:
Recycling assortment and processingHazardous waste companies (particularly oil-can drainage and separation)Normal waste removalBuy-back companies for hospitals and institutionsOn-site labour assist for recycling operationsAuction and disposal companies for second-hand items and scrap
The corporate’s objective and mission is easy however highly effective: To show waste into alternative for environmental affect, job creation and constructing worth chains that embody youth, small collectors and native communities.
Their long-term imaginative and prescient is to broaden hazardous-waste processing throughout the Western Cape, setting a brand new normal for compliance, transparency and repair supply whereas rising into a number of municipalities.
Studying, Adapting & Constructing Techniques That Scale
For Caz, entrepreneurship has been an intense studying curve. Certainly one of his largest studying curves?
You may’t depend on laborious work alone.
“The enterprise panorama modifications so shortly. You want construction, documentation, SOPs, accountability and the suitable individuals in the suitable roles to maintain up, adapt and develop on the identical pace,” he displays.
He additionally discovered the worth of the suitable aligned partnerships. “Not each alternative is price taking, and never each companion aligns along with your values, irrespective of how engaging the supply appears.”
Wanting again, he says that he would have formalised techniques and controls earlier, and sought assist sooner. “Whenever you function in survival mode, you don’t all the time take into consideration issues like audits, reporting instruments, pricing fashions, monetary controls or compliance. However these issues are what permit you to scale confidently.”
“There’s extra assist for SMMEs than we realise, however satisfaction and worry can maintain us again.”
Development Plans: Increasing Throughout the Western Cape
With it’s sturdy foundations now in place, NCINCI NDIQALA is getting into a strategic development part. Over the subsequent 24 months, the corporate goals to:
Scale its hazardous-waste processing facility, launching the second model of its customized drainage gear to extend security, compliance, and processing capability.Increase into further municipalities outdoors of Cape City, securing extra authorities and private-sector contracts.Develop its buyer base by onboarding two new purchasers per thirty days with a newly established West Coast route.Strengthen inside operations by way of SOPs, employees coaching, and enhanced admin capability.Entry strategic funding and gear resembling a granulator, wash plant, forklifts, and improved website infrastructure.
These plans mirror a enterprise transferring confidently towards long-term sustainability.
Influence That Issues
Requested what drives him as an entrepreneur, Caz proudly says: “Influence. Seeing how our enterprise has modified our household, given individuals jobs, and created alternatives in communities which are usually missed retains me going. I’m pushed by the concept that small beginnings can create huge affect if you keep constant, sincere, and dedicated.”
Stand-out highlights for him and the corporate embody:
Securing their first main tender in 2020 after years of setbacksBecoming accredited with the ROSE Basis for hazardous-waste processingOpening their hazardous-waste workshop and growing month-to-month processing volumesWinning third place within the Bellville Join Stage Up ProgrammeAnd, the largest spotlight for Caz: seeing employees members develop into management roles
These are the wins that matter most.
A Mindset Constructed on Adaptability & Accountability
For Caz, the entrepreneurial mindset means having the ability to adapt with out shedding course. It’s the flexibility to unravel issues when the assets are restricted, stay calm in uncertainty, study repeatedly, and see alternative the place others see obstacles.
It additionally means being keen to take accountability — even when it’s uncomfortable.
Recommendation for fellow South African entrepreneurs constructing companies
Caz gives three sage items of recommendation:
Begin small, however begin correctly. Construction your corporation early: contracts, pricing, reporting, compliance, techniques.Construct relationships, not transactions. Your community will open extra doorways than your advertising and marketing finances ever will.Keep constant. Development is gradual earlier than it turns into quick. Small every day actions compound into massive outcomes.
From Small Beginnings to Massive Risk
NCINCI NDIQALA is proof that small beginnings can develop into significant affect when resilience meets construction, and when neighborhood sits on the coronary heart of the mission.
Caz Johnson’s management displays this completely — guided by objective, strengthened by techniques, and pushed by the idea that waste can develop into alternative, and alternative can develop into change.
From a borrowed bakkie to an accredited recycling and hazardous-waste operation, NCINCI NDIQALA stands as a reminder that small beginnings usually result in the largest transformations.
