ABOUT US
Plastic&Chemical Trading (P&CT) was founded in 1989 by Roger Cockram, a veteran in the South African plastics industry. The company was initially established as a raw material trading operation that serviced the South African plastics industry.
In 1996 KraussMaffei, one of the most respected brands in plastics machinery visited South Africa, which had just re-entered the global market following the fall of apartheid, in search of a new agent to represent the brand.
Roger, who was now joined by his son Benjamin, jumped at the opportunity to work with the best in the business and transformed his company. P&CT’s focus shifted to the supply of Injection Moulding machinery.
This new industry had numerous requirements and the company developed slowly. Roger and his son decided to focus on mastering the following key requirements to be an effective partner in the industry:
• Process development.
• Project support.
• After sales support.
The challenges of starting an endeavour at this time in South Africa’s industry prompted the company to expand its efforts into the bottling industry, a move pioneered by the development of PET as a primary form of packaging in the soft drinks industry.
The development of the local automotive industry from 1998 was a golden opportunity as the company focussed on KraussMaffei’s strength as a partner to the global car industry.
In 2002 Heuft Systemtechnik approached P&CT to reassert a lost position as the local market leader in quality inspection in the bottling and food processing industries.
In 2008 the business took on KraussMaffei’s extrusion business KraussMaffei Berstorff a world leader in the pipe, sheet, compounding and rubber industries.
Today the company’s efforts are divided equally between the plastics industry specifically automotive, extrusion, logistics packaging and consumer packaging on the one hand and the bottling and food packaging industries.