SMALL BUSINESS HUB

The SEIFSA Small Business Hub (SBH) continues its efforts to support small businesses through partnerships with both the private and public sectors. The hub’s aim is to ensure that small business interests are represented in various platforms where SEIFSA Divisions lobby, enhancing its efforts in influencing policy in favour of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within the Metals and Engineering (M&E) sector.

Sixty-six percent of the companies that are affiliated to SEIFSA’s member Associations are small businesses. Through the SEIFSA Small Business Hub, SEIFSA strives to assist these companies to navigate the very tough operating environment. To this end, SEIFSA formed a number of partnerships to support small businesses.

• SEIFSA partnered with manufacturing industry veteran Leon Viljoen to provide support, guidance and advice to SMEs to help them run successful and sustainable businesses. Mr Viljoen has more than 20 years’ experience in project and business management and as a C-suite-level executive at large businesses, such as ABB

South Africa and Powertech Transformers. His experience in optimising business operations and improving performance allowed SEIFSA to provide SMEs crucial advice on how to run businesses, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. • Mr Viljoen hosted a series of webinars between

October 2020 and March 2021 on the building blocks of a successful business. More than 450 people attended the webinars, which were also recorded and can be accessed on SEIFSA’s

YouTube page as well as through the SBH website. • SEIFSA joined forces with VennCap to assist companies to successfully secure funding for their businesses, thus enabling them to chart a course to sustainability as efforts to revive the economy get under way. VennCap specialises in helping SMEs access funding. Their value proposition is to provide solutions to assist companies to successfully secure funding for their businesses, thus enabling them to chart a course to sustainability. SEIFSA’s partnership with VennCap allows us to serve as a conduit to help businesses in the sector access funding. Once again communication to the industry was through a series of webinars and several companies were successfully assisted through this partnership. • SEIFSA also partnered with Niche Consulting to assist companies to successfully claim TERS funds for employee loss of income during the COVID-19 lockdown period. The challenge was that a large number of small to medium sized companies were struggling to secure the Temporary Employer /

Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) benefits. Some applied for all staff but were only successful in receiving funds for a handful of employees. Niche were able to assist them to secure the balance of funds for their staff.