By Koketso Mamabolo
While South Africa’s manufacturing industry employs over 1.5 million, only 552 000 of those people are women. Mondi South Africa, part of the global leader in sustainable packaging and paper which employs around 22 000 people in 30 countries, are doing their bit to increase the representation of women and have had so much success over the last few years that they were recognised for their efforts in at the 2025 Standard Bank Top Women Awards.
Their approach, which made them stand out in the Top Women Business in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion category, began with identifying women leaders in the organisation who could facilitate and lead the process of making the organisation more inclusive.
Through engagement workshops, Mondi South Africa then identified the barriers and challenges faced by women in the workplace, and internal best practice. High-level research was conducted on external best practice, with the final result being the organisation’s Gender Diversity Action Plan.
In 2025 employees received diversity and inclusion training to help them recognise their own biases, teach them how to deal with those biases and associated behaviours, and how to eliminate sexual harassment from the workplace.
Their achievements speak for themselves. Besides going from a Level 7 to a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor in less than a decade, Mondi South Africa has made fantastic strides in improving representation of women in the organisation. About a third of staff are women, and over eighty percent fall under the ACI category (African, Coloured or Indian). Forty percent of the students in their student pipeline are women, all of which are ACI, with significant amounts of the training budget spent on ACI employees.
Mondi South Africa’s medium and long-term objectives for gender inclusivity are detailed, with clarity on who is accountable, and indicative of an organisation which understands how diversity is good for business, particularly in such a male-dominated industry.
Over the next five to ten years they seek to set up bi-annual mentorship and coaching programmes for women in the organisation, a DEI curriculum for women to thrive in manufacturing and to strengthen their pipeline of women entering the manufacturing industry by engaging schools more and implementing scholarship and bursary programmes.
In the long-term, Mondi South Africa wants to appoint more women to leadership positions, institute a manufacturing leadership programme, and have just under a third of the shopfloor consist of women.
“In Mondi, we believe that diversity is not just altering statistics; we are nurturing a legacy of inclusion, a legacy that will define our collective future.”
“Through MSA’s lens, we glimpse a future where diversity is not a goal but a lived reality, where every voice is heard, and every talent is nurtured. The path is challenging, but the destination—a world where difference does not limit potential but ignites possibility—is undeniably worth the journey.”
