A MANDELA Bay company established five years ago is riding the crest of the wave after achieving the highest rating nationally awarded by an independent specialist group for economic empowerment – and it has no black directors.

Instead, engineering operation Ocean Legacy Marine, based at the Perseverance industrial area, gained its “level one” status by meeting criteria in other areas. It is understood to be the first white-owned company with no black management to be awarded the top rating under black economic empowerment laws.

Based on its turnover of under R35-million a year, the company‘s qualification in four of seven categories was sufficient for it to achieve the level one score of 100 points and a procurement recognition level of 135 per cent without having to be measured in the three other categories.

Those measured were skills development, preferential procurement, enterprise development and socio-economic development. Excluded were ownership, management, and employment equity.

“When I joined the company 2½ years ago, we were virtually a new operation and had no formal programme to track our progress in the different empowerment categories,” managing director Kevin Gray said.

Having worked previously for Telkom and MTN , Gray brought empowerment planning and human resources into his personal management portfolio.

“It‘s critical to have formal empowerment credentials as government departments and parastatals use these in their procurement processes.

“Companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange and many other companies have similar procurement policies, so the only way forward for Ocean Legacy Marine was to get our broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) status right.

‘It was also important from a moral and ethical point of view to implement the various elements of the BBBEE scorecard to assist with training and uplifting our staff and community as a whole.”

Gray and his fellow managers decided that implementing a workable BBBEE plan and developing skills was a more efficient route than selling shares in the company or “giving away shares for the sake of window dressing”, said Gray.

“We have taken on unskilled workers and advanced them, not only through on-the-job training but also various programmes.

“Forty-three per cent of the supervisory staff have advanced through these programmes.”

Gray added that Ocean Legacy Marine (OLM) itself had a procurement policy based on empowerment credentials.

The rating was audited by PKF BEE Solutions, an accredited verification agency and a member of PKF International Ltd, headed by Roger Latchman.

He said that going the route chosen by OLM was providing benefits including skills training and socio-economic development involving many employees.

At the same time as gaining the BBBEE credentials, OLM is also experiencing growth in its main divisions, one being specialised welding for the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries.

Another is providing electrical power distribution switch- boards and emergency power generators, and a third building specialised aluminium boats, mainly for export into Africa.