1. History
The Sheltered Employment Factories (SEF) were established more than 65 years ago to provide employment opportunities for people with disabilities who were unable to hold down employment in the open labour market due to the nature of their afflictions.
Currently around 97% of the workers in our factories fit this profile. The SEF now has 12 factories across South Africa operating in 7 of the 9 provinces, with only Mpumalanga and Limpopo without a facility. Factories are located in Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, East London, Johannesburg, Kimberly, Pietermaritzburg, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom and Pretoria.
Collectively they employ some 1050 disabled people supported by 120 administration, management and technical staff. With current premises – land, buildings and equipment - there is the potential to provide meaningful work opportunities for more than handicapped people.
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2. 2. Transformation
The Department of Labour inherited the SEF from the previous Government and has in the recent past taken a bold step of embarking on a turnaround strategy, which is aimed at transforming the SEF into entities where people with disabilities can be employed regardless of their race, gender or creed.
The attainment of legal status for the SEF will enable the organisation to trade effectively and competitively within the industry.
The finalization of the business case will mean the SEF will be established as an entity that can financed adequately and conduct trade.

3. 3. Marketing
Mainly due to the preferential procurement status that the SEF enjoyed until 1999, the organisation never had to market itself and develop new markets to remain relevant to in the economic landscape.
Strategically marketing remains the key to raising sales and creating more job opportunities for people with disabilities. We have managed to achieve some success in the form of ensuring that information is available about the SEF on the web, becoming visible at conferences and exhibitions, producing and distributing publication regarding the SEF to key stockholders and potential customers.
There is still more to be done and we have plans of embarking on marketing campaigns, engaging in talks with other stakeholders to secure certain portions of their expenditure and increasing the accessibility of the SEF to customers.

4. The SEF proposed future
The SEF is about to commence with the second phase of the business case that will mean;
The SEF will have a legal identity
The SEF can compete competitively in the market
Adequate funding is provided to finance operational costs.

5. 5. Production
We have improved production capacity whereby all the 12 SEF factories utilize at least 95% of their production capacity. With the assistance of Productivity SA project that is being piloted and our Johannesburg textiles factory, we will realign our production standards with industry standards
– by reengineering factory set-ups and manufacturing to high quality norms. The project has unearthed other related issues that affect production levels and capacity which we have undertaken to address immediately where possible.

6. Employment Creation through the SEF
We have drafted various business proposals to organisations such as the W&R SETA, the FP&M SETA to propose the use of the Sheltered Employment resources and manufacturing background to help create jobs for not only people with disabilities, but for the youth as well. We will be piloting a project with Basic Education in 3 Provinces to provide gainful employment to young people, provide them with skills and business management.
Our vision is that of establishing a national network of factories and factory outlets that contribute to the economic empowerment of people with disabilities (including ex-combatants) and that support metropolitan, rural and local community organizations and enterprises. Where disabled people are to contribute to, and be integrated into the nation’s economy.