Wendel spent weeks in his kitchen in Sunnyside developing polish formulations. His wife was not pleased when the whole kitchen ceiling was covered in polish after a failed experiment.

Eventually he scraped some money together to buy bottles and labels to pack a first product, car polish MOPOL. Wendel found a cleaning outlet to buy the product and also registered a company in 1966 called Strat-Chem, to enable him to continue the business which he believed in.

Although the polish performed extremely well, he was informed by the customer that people are basically lazy and do not like to use polish. The same outlet asked Wendel to make dishwashing liquid for a possible tender. He made the full quantity only to be told that the tender was awarded to another supplier. Stuck without money and a lot of DELDET dishwashing liquid Wendel organised a group of housewives to sell the product. Sales rocketed and he soon had to rent a factory and build a mixing plant using a rainwater tank as the vessel and an old electric drill for the mixer. Wendel bought up old Volkswagen Kombis which he rebuilt, re-painted and branded with the Strat-Chem logo. Sales were increasing with more products and they managed to deliver 4 kombi’s full of product daily throughout Pretoria.

In about 1973 Wendel bought some land in Waltloo and built a new factory to cater for his ambitious new project and the needs of a growing business.

When his business partner’s wife had a baby Wendel saw an opportunity to clean nappies. Every day he was presented with a freshly stained nappy and cut this in half to compare 2 formulations at a time. After a month and about 40 formulations later Wendel had developed a winner which launched Happi Nappi in competition with Steri Nappi. Happi Nappi was distributed nationwide to all the major supermarkets and within a short period outselling the market leader Steri nappi.

 Eventully Wendel ceased selling country wide due to ever increasing cost pressure from the major supermarket chains making it non sustainable.

The business was metamorphosed after selling Happi Nappi Brand to Adcock Ingram the owners of Steri Nappi. Strat-Chem was now known as Abyx Marketing who continued to contract manufacture for many years.  The cash injection helped to fund a plant to spray dry washing powders.

WendeI was successful at finding many customers to buy the washing powder but spray drying uses a lot of fuel for heating. Eventually he was forced to close this plant after 15 years due to ever increasing fuel costs but due to his ever positive attitude and passion for trying new ideas, Wendel managed to formulate many other very successful products which till today forms the base of Abyx Chemical Manufacturing’s successful range of products.

Over the years Wendel has through his use of knowledge and expertise built a company with strong values of trust and friendship and many of his initial staff who joined the company so many years back still bears testimony to this legacy.

Today ABYX is still active in the detergent industry manufacturing domestic and industrial cleaning chemicals.