About Us
About Dowel & Co.
In the 1930’s, Mr. Katz opened a small dowel manufacturing plant on the goldfields of Johannesburg, South Africa.
The business grew and in 1956 he sold the dowel rounding and sanding machines to Mr. Sanderson who relocated the business to Waltloo, Pretoria and called it Pretoria Dowel Manufacturers. Initially the logs were sourced from government sawmills, cut into boards, airdried and cut it into squares before rounding into broom handles for Academy Brush, Rand Broom & Brush and Leonard Broom & Brush (which was later sold to Addis).
In 1972 a fire destroyed the factory, and it took about six months to rebuild before production could recommence.
Eventually it was decided to buy spindle molders as well as tool & cutter grinding machines and so they started manufacturing their own tooling, which resulted in the rapid expansion of Pretoria Dowel Manufacturers.
In 1986, Tyrone Sanderson took over the running of the business from his father and did so successfully until his retirement in 2017, when he decided to sell the machines on auction. RSB (Pty) Ltd. bought the business as a going concern run by Antoinette Pottow and relocated the factory to Chamdor, Krugersdorp.
The relocation and subsequent commissioning took some months but by the end of 2017 PDM started trading. In 2021 we started the process of breaking away from RSB (Pty) Ltd. and changed our name to Dowel & Co. (Pty) Ltd. in honour of our humble beginnings on the gold fields of the Johannesburg.
At Dowel & Co. we use South African timbers such as Saligna, a South African Eucaluptus and Pinus Patula, a local Pine. We manufacture dowels from 4mm to 25mm but can turn product up to 50mm with ease. Our standard lengths are 900mm and 1800mm but all lengths are available on request, as well as finger-joined and/or laminated products.
Species include Saligna, Pine, Meranti and available exotic timbers. We also make dowel pins (fluted & non-fluted), broom & rake handles and charging sticks and rods.
Nadia Solomons is the lovely face of Dowel & Co. She handles telesales & marketing as well as all of our administration, quotes and orders.
Kyle Pottow ensures that orders flow from the office to the factory and that it arrives at our clients on time. He also visits stores to check how they receive stock and place product. Kyle spent thousands of hours on a Netcare ambulance as a paramedic so he is also in charge of our Health & Safety.
Antoinette Pottow manages marketing, sales and customer relationships.
On our floor we have six men and three women under the capable supervision of Ayanda Xaba.
