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4
Fond
memories
After what can only be described as a traumatic
experience I vowed never to put my welfare in the
hands of an employer again and made up my mind
to somewhere, somehow start my own business.
While I searched for the right opportunity I worked
as a freelance consultant to a number of firms in the
country.
I knew that to be successful my business had to be
founded on products that were unique, would appeal to
markets outside of South Africa, and would allow me to
travel.
After two business failures, I became involved in the
housing industry in Africa. At the time there were some
500 million people on the continent so I reasoned that
there had to be a need for housing.
I knew that the human race had been building using
soil or mud for thousands of years but I also knew that
most of the structures built in this way frequently didn’t
last long when the rainy season arrived. Still, the use of
soil in structure appealed to my sense of the necessary
economics for my business. In addition, I knew that the
building system had to be simple so that unskilled people
could make the blocks and build with it.
It was this thought process that led me to the idea of a
dry-stacking interlocking block which used no mortar when
The 25-year story of Hydraform
began in 1983 when I was
retrenched by a large engineering
group that closed its offices in
South Africa.
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