Plastic waste paves the way for innovator

GrooveTech uses waste to produce asphalt for road construction and repairs

- Sihle Manda

What began in the rural heartland of Goromani, Hazyview in the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality, Mpumalanga, has evolved into a pioneering green tech company poised to reshape how South Africa thinks about roads and plastic waste.

GrooveTech, founded in 2019, is the brainchild of Linah Maphanga, a passionate physicist with a vision to solve two of the country's pressing challenges: waste management and deteriorating road infrastructure.

“We started this company in 2019, but later moved to Gauteng, because we were receiving more support from the City of Tshwane compared to municipalities in Mpumalanga,” said Maphanga, director of GrooveTech.

The start-up originally operated from the Innovation Hub in Gauteng, where it received significant government support.

As operations expanded to meet industrial demands, the company relocated to Silverton, Pretoria - a move that enabled closer collaboration with the City of Tshwane and improved access to key stakeholders.

“We moved this side to help the municipality trial some of our products,” she explains.