The cleaning economy is usually described as labour – the person who arrives to clean a house or an office. But every one of those jobs consumes something: detergent, floor cleaner, bleach, dishwashing liquid, disinfectant. That demand does not have to be met by a multinational bottling plant. In Gauteng, a provincial programme has spent the past year proving that township manufacturers can make and sell those products at a standard shops will stock, which turns cleaning from a source of work into a source of industry.
The evidence comes from the province’s Chemical Support Programme, run under a partnership model with the Gibela Business Incubator and reported by BusinessTech in early 2026. Funded to support twenty-five small manufacturers in the chemicals, cosmetics and cleaning-products value chain, it ended up backing twenty-eight. Between them the businesses created twenty-five new jobs, sustained thirteen more and generated over R2.6 million in revenue through better access to formal markets. “We were funded to support 25 SMMEs, and we exceeded that target by supporting 28,” said Gibela chief executive Justine Mogashoa, who put the results down to the growth waiting inside township manufacturing once structured support is applied.
The programme is deliberately structured. It groups chemicals, cosmetics and cleaning products together because they share the same route to market – a formulation, a bottle, a label, a barcode and a buyer – and it works through an incubator rather than a grant so that the money buys capability rather than stock. That distinction matters: a once-off cash injection buys a batch of product, while sustained technical support buys the ability to make the next batch, and the one after that, to a standard a shop will accept.
From a working formula to a market-ready product
The gap the programme addresses is not chemistry. Plenty of people can mix a cleaning product that works. The gap is everything between a working formula and a bottle a retailer will put on a shelf, and it is wider than most first-time manufacturers expect. A product needs a consistent recipe that performs the same in every batch, packaging that survives a supply chain and carries lawful labelling, a barcode a till can read, and enough proof of quality and safety that a buyer will risk its own reputation stocking it.
That is the route the Gauteng programme walked its manufacturers along: product testing, packaging design, GS1 barcode registration – South Africa’s official barcodes come from GS1 South Africa – brand positioning and marketing support. It is unglamorous, technical work, and it is exactly what separates a bucket of product sold to neighbours from a line a formal retailer will list. One supported detergent brand, according to the reporting, secured listings on major platforms including Makro, Takealot and the Proudly South African online store – the difference between a hustle and a business.
Why value addition changes the maths
The reason this matters beyond the twenty-eight firms is where the value sits in a cleaning economy. Labour is paid once, per clean. A product is made, marked up and sold repeatedly, and the margin between the raw chemicals and the retail price stays in the hands of whoever manufactures and brands it. For a township entrepreneur, moving from selling cleaning services to making cleaning products is a move up the value chain: it builds an asset – a brand, a recipe, a customer list – rather than only an income. And the demand is real and local. Every household and business that hires a cleaner, increasingly through formal introduction platforms such as Kleana, is a household or business that then buys the products the cleaner uses.
The maths only works, though, if the product clears the bar the programme sets. A detergent that separates on the shelf, a label that misstates its contents, or a missing barcode does not just lose one sale; it loses the retailer’s trust and the shelf space with it. This is why the technical steps are not bureaucracy to be endured but the actual product being built. Compliance is not the price of entering the market; increasingly, it is the market.
It helps to see the shelf from the retailer’s side. A buyer for a chain or an online platform is not looking for the cheapest detergent; it is looking for one that will not embarrass it – one that scans at the till, that is labelled correctly, that performs as the bottle claims and that arrives in the quantities promised. Every technical step the programme funds is really an answer to a question that buyer will ask, which is why a small manufacturer that has been through the process can hold a conversation a backyard supplier cannot even start.
There is a caution in the numbers too. Twenty-five new jobs and R2.6 million across twenty-eight businesses is meaningful, but it is modest, and it took a funded incubator to achieve. Manufacturing is capital-hungry and margins on commodity cleaning products are thin. The programme’s lesson is not that anyone can print money mixing bleach; it is that with testing, packaging, a barcode and a route to a real retailer, a township chemicals business can become a market-ready manufacturer rather than a backyard supplier. The support did not invent the demand – it made these firms able to meet it on terms a formal buyer accepts.
The move that matters for an aspiring manufacturer is to treat cleaning products as an industry from the first batch, not a sideline. Get the recipe consistent, get the product tested, register the barcode, design a label that tells the truth, and find the incubator, buyer or programme that can walk you from your kitchen to a shelf. The demand for what cleaners use is not going away; the question is who in the township gets to make it.
Source: Kleana Africa – kleana.africa
