From Single Bakkie to Circular Manufacturing Powerhouse - The Rise of GeT Metal Group

In 2013, entrepreneur Andrew Bishop, along with Juan’Dré Olivier, started a small recycling business with a simple but ambitious vision: recover value from materials that others considered waste.

Today, GeT Metal Group has evolved from a two-man collection business operating a single bakkie into one of South Africa’s most diversified circular manufacturing giants, processing thousands of tonnes of waste materials every month.

What began with Bishop and Olivier personally collecting waste glass from pubs and restaurants in Strand, Western Cape, quickly expanded into plastics, paper, and metals. As volumes grew, the business established collection branches across the province and unlocked direct export channels into international markets.

Today, that original collection platform operates through GeT Metal and Waste, the group’s buy-back and material aggregation network, while the wider GeT Metal Group has grown to include separate businesses spanning resource recovery, foundries, manufacturing, and energy production.

Building A Nationwide Circular Economy Network

The scale of the group’s buy-back centre network demonstrates the depth of its impact.

In 2025, buy-back centres owned and operated within the group paid approximately R322 million to waste collectors across South Africa. These payments were made to 48,752 different clients, the majority of whom were informal waste collectors, across 10 buy-back centres.

This equates to more than R1 million paid out on average for every business day in 2025, creating a direct financial incentive for waste collection.

During the same period, the buy-back centres collected 63,563 tonnes of waste material.

A Transformational Partnership And Industrial Expansion

The group’s meteoric rise accelerated in 2020 when Bishop met future business partner Ebrahim Khan, then a senior executive advisor at Hisense South Africa and Head of Investments at Unipalm Investment Holdings.

Recognising a shared vision for industrial beneficiation, the duo travelled to Turkey within weeks of meeting to purchase their first aluminium melting furnaces. This bold move birthed GeT Alloys and launched a new era of exponential growth.

"When we bought those first furnaces, we knew we wanted to move beyond traditional recycling and into high-value manufacturing," says Andrew Bishop, Director of GeT Metal Group.

"We saw an incredible opportunity to close the loop entirely. To look at what we have achieved now, transforming hundreds of waste streams into precision industrial inputs, validates that original belief. We are proving that sustainability and industrial growth can go hand in hand."

Scaling Manufacturing Through GeT Alloys And Rely Precision Castings

Today, GeT Alloys operates state-of-the-art smelting facilities in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

The division processes approximately 350 million used aluminium beverage cans annually, alongside thousands of tonnes of post-industrial and post-consumer scrap, transforming them into high-quality products for local and international manufacturers.

The group's circular economy model is further strengthened by Rely Precision Castings, which manufactures high-quality investment castings for automotive, rail, mining, and agricultural sectors.

Responding To National Challenges With Innovation

Even global crises were met with entrepreneurial agility.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the group established GeT Oxy to tackle severe national oxygen shortages.

Today, GeT Oxy supplies vital industrial-grade oxygen to demolition and decommissioning projects across South Africa, supporting critical gas-cutting operations on obsolete infrastructure and mining equipment.

Strengthening Local Industry Through GeT Steel

GeT Steel, based in the Atlantis Industrial area, manufactures approximately 5,000 tonnes of steel billets per month for local and export markets, using recovered scrap steel as its primary input.

The facility has become a significant contributor to job creation in Atlantis, while supporting the broader reindustrialisation of the area through high-value local manufacturing.

Closing The Loop With GeT Energy

The final piece of the ecosystem fell into place in 2025 with the launch of GeT Energy.

This advanced oxygen-free thermal treatment facility processes end-of-life waste tyres into tyre-derived fuel oil, recovered carbon products, and steel wire.

In a perfect showcase of industrial symbiosis, the fuel oil directly powers GeT Alloys’ furnaces, while the recovered steel wire is fed straight into GeT Steel.

"Our model is about complete integration," explains Ebrahim Khan, Director of GeT Metal Group.

"With GeT Energy, we have built a self-sustaining loop where waste from one sector becomes the primary manufacturing input for another. We are not just cleaning up environments; we are actively building a robust, circular industrial economy that creates real jobs and high-value products."

Looking Ahead

With hundreds of employees nationwide, multiple foundries, and an ever-expanding international footprint, GeT Metal Group has redefined what is possible in the African green economy.

From a single bakkie in Strand to a global circular powerhouse, the journey is only just beginning.

For more information, please visit https://getmetalgroup.co.za/