Mail & Guardian reporter
Combined Fishing Enterprises, one of a few of the genuine black-owned family businesses in the fishing industry, has weathered many a storm in realising its goals.
Its vision is to become a formid-able force in the South African fishing industry and to have a world-renowned brand of quality products.
The family has a long history in fishing. It started with their dad, Victor Lucas, who sailed the seas for more than 50 years.
His son Basil has fished for almost 40 years. Basil began his fishing career at the age of 15 and after leaving school he went to work for Irvin & Johnson.
He worked on foreign trawlers to further his career and he spent 12 years fishing on the coasts of Namibia, Mauritania and Spanish Sahara.
In 1992, after many years as a skipper, Basil Lucas has realised his dream of owning a freezer trawler. He has a selling agreement for his catch with I&J.
His wife Doreen, who grew up in a fishing village, began working in a fish factory in the 1980s and today is a director of Combined Fishing. She assists in managing their two vessels.
Like other small companies in the sector, Combined Fishing had suffered due to the lack of business acumen. Enter brother Don Lucas in 1993. Don worked in the financial sector for more than 12 years and was no stranger to negotiating with big business.
Combined Fishing, with its combined experiences and collective love for fishing, was now ready to put its honed skills to work for what it believed was its right to ownership in a industry it has been part of for more than 90 years.
Today it has a small hake quota, owns two vessels and employs more than 35 people on a full-time basis a rarity in the industry.
Combined Fishing, like many a black business in the fishing industry, is committing itself to standards and practices to develop its employees.
In so doing it is changing the culture of an industry that for long has ignored the needs of its most valued asset the fishermen.