Africa offers countless opportunities and the potential for developing the agricultural market is vast. Therefore, many people with passion and persistence came to this continent to realise their life goals and make contributions to the improvement of many farmers’ lives.
Volker Harmen Schadewaldt and his mother, Hertha, came to South Africa in 1951. He was a German radio technician who was eventually employed at the then Jan Smuts International Airport in Johannesburg. In the late fifties, with his savings, he bought a small farm in Laezonia, south west of Pretoria. Farming was running through his veins since his grandfather pre-viously farmed in Tanzania.
Anita Gent was appointed as the new director of Bonnox in 2013. In her hands is the 1965 edition of the Sears Roebuck & Co industrial catalogue which triggered her father’s dream of manufacturing easy-to-erect fencing in South Africa. The first edition of the catalogue was published in 1908.
Anita Gent, Mr Schadewaldt’s daughter, says: “My father and grandmother loved Africa with the outdoors and sun and working hands-on. One day, while fencing his farm with barbed wire, he started to play with the idea of an easier, better way to do this strenuous task. This was where his dream of manufacturing his own, easy-to-erect fencing was born.”
At that stage, Mr Schadewaldt had an American friend who gave him a Sears Roebuck & Co industrial catalogue from America. In there was an advertisement for woven fencing. This was indeed the perfect answer to what he was grappling with and he was convinced that South Africa should have that as well.
He travelled to America, Australia and New-Zealand where wire-making machines were built, but he couldn’t afford one. Back home he approached another wire company for financing. He succeeded and in the 1960’s he imported two machines to manufacture hinge joint fencing, which he would distribute as one of their agents in South-Africa. Today he can be regarded as the person who brought the concept of hinge joint fencing to South Africa.
Mr Schadewaldt demonstrates the erection of Bonnox fencing on a farm in 1966.
In 1962 he bought the name, Bonnox from a pharmaceutical company. He loved the name because the first part, bon, means good and lovely in French and Latin. He rented a small shop in the southern part of Pretoria from where he could import and distribute fencing. His wife, Jean, was the bookkeeper and his mother was a shareholder-employee who helped where she could.
“My dad is an ideas person and with his amazing ideas he knew how to steer the business. As a little girl I ran around and played in the shop and the fencing is still in my blood. He and my mother always talked Bonnox,” Anita says.
Some of the loyal Bonnox employees have been with the company for two to three decades.
Mr Schadewaldt’s dream did not end there. In 1982, he went to Pennsylvania in America and imported a secondhand machine. He bought a shop in Rosslyn, north of Pretoria, which is still famous as an industrial area. After a while he sold the property and in 1984 he obtained a loan and bought a property in Sunderland Ridge, south west of Pretoria, which was just starting to develop as an industrial area. He erected one of the first factories in the area. Now he had a factory and one dormant machine. To keep the cash flow going, he was still trading imported and local fencing.
Soon after that, he imported two more machines from New Zealand. The one was more than 100 years old and also practically broken down. Both were interlocking wire weaving machines. Things started to develop and they could afford to employ a few more people. In no time they had a full functioning factory.
The fi rst Bonnox premises south of Pretoria was occupied in 1965.
In 1994 Mr Schadewaldt employed another practical genius, Charl de Beer, who was a fitter and turner by trade. He could turn any piece of steel into any part for these old equipment. In 1989 the Berlin wall came down and Mr Schadewaldt, who was originally from Berlin, travelled to Germany. He also went to Reutlingen, an industrial city where many steel factories were based. They bought and imported a big ring lock machine from a company called Wafios.
Since Mr Schadewaldt was a radio technician, he was very scientifically minded and precise, and loved to grapple with applied scientific concepts. He met metallurgists and engineers and spent a lot of time and effort with his suppliers to develop the perfect metal mixture for Bonnox’s wire. But he worked long nights and was rarely at home. He had his typical German way of doing things.
The available floor space became too small and in 2002 he bought the stand next door, which he converted into another factory which holds two new in-house built machines. Mr Schadewaldt retired as General Manager in 2010 when he was already in his 80’s. Anita, who is actually a pharmacist by trade, took over shortly afterwards.
Bonnox has a very good reputation in South Africa. This cartoon was published many years ago in another agricultural magazine.
“Today, Bonnox manufactures 70different fencing products from 600 mm up to 2 400 mm high for every possible fencing function on a farm. Our wire is fully galvanised and a single vertical wire can resist a force of 220 kg, while a single horizontal wire can stop 415 kg. This prefabricated wire fencing made the lives of thousands of Southern African farmers so much easier,” says Anita, who is committed to taking this business forward for another lifetime.
Call the friendly Bonnox sales team at +27-12-666-8717 or send an e-mail to zane@bonnox.co.za, gerda@bonnox.co.za or linda@bonnox.co.za. You can also visit their useful website at www.bonnox.co.za for more information.
