Lift off for Thebe Resources Incubator

Thebe Resources Incubator has finally taken off. The Incubator’s CEO, Bevan Jones, spoke to Thebe Times about the objective of the organisation and how is it likely to impact the South African resources industry.

What does the Thebe Resources Incubator (TRI) do?

The Thebe Resources Incubator is a not-for-profit company that invests with emerging entrepreneurs in the resource sectors, particularly in mining, oil & gas, agriculture, infrastructure and logistics. The investment is concentrated to provide value-added services up to pre-feasibility stage to enable the entrepreneur to stay invested in the project as it moves up the value curve. The Incubator may receive funding from the mining houses, some of which will then be spent directly by with geologists and drilling companies to develop a mining entrepreneur’s projects and take them to bankable stage. Together with effective community involvement, Thebe believes that this initiative can greatly assist transformation in South Africa’s resource sector.

How did the idea of TRI come about?

In my capacity as Head of the energy and metals for Rand Merchant Bank and also as General Manager of London Commodity Broker’s South African office, I saw many capable African entrepreneurs lose out on funding and ownership in projects simply because they didn’t have the right experience or contacts or early stage financial backing. I contacted Thebe and that’s where it all started.

Thebe’s pay-off line is “Building communities. Our bottom line.” How does the TRI contribute to realising this brand promise?

Every entrepreneur lives and works in a community. Thebe’s vehicle for community upliftment is the Thebe Foundation. The idea is that the Incubator will develop specific resource entrepreneurs and the Foundation will map the needs of the partner community. Working together in this way will provide an integrated solution to community building.

One of the killers of emerging businesses in the resources sector is the scarcity of capital. How does TRI plan to mobilise funds to ensure that there is finance available to help fledging businesses move up the production curve?

The capital is sourced from Enterprise and Supply development funding. All corporates must spend 4% of their net profit after on creating such programmes. TRI provides a focused solution for corporates to spend this money constructively and responsibly and to create suppliers which then feed into their supply chains. TRI will ‘shepherd’ this capital and spend it on the services that the entrepreneur requires to take his business up the value curve.

In South Korea, companies are incubated for up to three or four years. How long are companies going to be incubated by the TRI?

TRI has developed a programme with 4 modules namely core, growth, launch and maintainance. The core module is to prepare the entrepreneur properly; the growth module is where the value adding services are provided; the launch module is where the entrepreneur is catapulted into the market and the maintainance module is where TRI keeps contact for at least one year to report on the progress. All in all I imagine 3 years is about the right time for TRI.