Lehlohonolo Thomas Ndlozi is trying to do something few South Africans have attempted: build a homegrown original equipment manufacturer capable of competing with the Swedish giants that have long dominated Africa’s mining-equipment market.
As Managing Director and Business Development Director of TALPA, he has just secured the company’s largest order to date, a fleet destined for a gold-mining operation, with the last of seven units due for delivery by the end of the first quarter of 2027. It is a milestone in a journey that began not in a boardroom but on the East Rand, and that was shaped as much by rejection as by opportunity.
Ndlozi credits his parents with instilling two complementary values. His father, a qualified welder who built armoured cash-in-transit vehicles, modelled a fierce work ethic paired with kindness and a sense that labour is about pride and providing for family, not merely income. His mother, a former housewife who later became an entrepreneur herself, brought courage and self-belief, and remains one of the biggest influences on his entrepreneurial path.
Before mining equipment, Ndlozi ran a white-label skincare business while working full-time in the sector, a venture that taught him how difficult it is to break into FMCG retail and convinced him that a good product alone is never enough; the infrastructure around it, capital, compliance, distribution and marketing, matters just as much.
That lesson followed him into mining equipment. Working as a Quality Control Specialist at manufacturer FERMEL, he noticed how little diversity existed among original equipment manufacturers, with few Black-owned South African companies designing and selling new capital mining equipment, even as the industry depended heavily on large international OEMs whose profits flowed offshore. He applied to Sandvik three times over roughly a year and was turned down each time without detailed explanation, told simply that he “wasn’t the right fit.” The rejections were painful at the time, but he now regards them differently. “Rejection isn’t necessarily rejection,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s redirection.”
| TALPA at a Glance | |
|---|---|
| Founder and MD | Lehlohonolo Thomas Ndlozi |
| Base of operations | Potchefstroom (hosted by partner facility DMC, owned by Niekie Pelser) |
| Origin | Turkish-South African partnership, formed after Ndlozi’s direct outreach to international OEMs |
| Latest milestone | Largest order to date: a fleet for a gold-mining operation, 7 units, final delivery due Q1 2027 |
| Current footprint | South Africa, West Africa, Zimbabwe |
| Funding model | Fully self-funded; no government, IDC or special financial backing |
TALPA’s origins trace to a period when Ndlozi was actually preparing to leave mining altogether to launch a dishwasher-product venture. Recognising he understood the machines, customers and problems of the industry too well to walk away, he began cold-emailing international OEMs looking to enter the Southern Hemisphere, eventually connecting with Turkish manufacturer TALPA after an earlier partnership with a Black industrialist collapsed over differing visions. Persistent correspondence, rather than an established track record, convinced TALPA there was a market opportunity in Southern Africa, and the partnership was built from there.
The machines currently arrive fully assembled from Turkey. “We’re not going to pretend otherwise,” Ndlozi says, though he is candid that local value-add remains a work in progress, with a near-term target of 25 to 40 percent localisation rising eventually towards 60 percent, tied directly to sales volumes. “The reality is that localisation is directly linked to sales,” he says. “The more machines we sell, the more capital we can invest into local manufacturing capability, tooling, skills development and employment.”
Engineering philosophy centres on simplicity: deliberately uncomplicated architecture and cross-platform powertrain commonality of roughly 60 to 70 percent between similar-class loaders and dump trucks, reducing the inventory and technical burden on customers and improving reliability underground. Ndlozi positions the company as price-competitive but argues its real proposition is total cost of ownership through reliability and parts availability, rather than price alone.
The path has not been without setbacks, including deals that collapsed over technical issues such as incorrect axle specifications, which TALPA reworked rather than abandoned. Ndlozi is frank that trust remains the hardest barrier to overcome in a conservative industry with entrenched relationships to established Swedish OEMs, and he does not shy away from naming race as a factor. “Race and perceptions around race can play a significant role in who gets an opportunity and, ultimately, who receives the order,” he says.
“It is uncomfortable to talk about, but if we are serious about transformation in the mining industry, we have to be honest about the barriers that Black-owned and emerging companies still face.” The company has been entirely self-funded, without government or IDC support, a deliberate choice to prove commercial competitiveness before leaning on localisation policy. “There has been no government support, no IDC funding and no special financial backing that built this company,” he says. “I’ve had to fund and build it myself. Powered by God, essentially.”
Ndlozi has survived Stage 3 cancer and a car accident during chemotherapy, alongside repeated business setbacks, and describes perseverance rather than any single triumph as his defining measure of success. “Sometimes the greatest achievement isn’t winning,” he says. “Sometimes it’s simply not stopping. You get knocked down, you get back up.” His ambition for TALPA is for it to be mentioned in the same breath as the established Swedish manufacturers, built through genuine local partnership and progressive localisation rather than a protected market. “Not because we copied them,” he says. “Not because somebody gave us a protected market.”