Trade Up Front 133 (PTY) Ltd T/A Flame Corporation was initially founded in 1997. Extensive local research and design activities were undertaken in preparation for the local manufacturing of chafer fuel for the South African hospitality and catering industries. Our products were rapidly adopted by the local market due to “cost and quality” products being readily available and supplied by a trusted South African company that attributes “Superior Service” as its reason for success.

Over the years Flame has undertaken numerous comprehensive design review initiatives on all fuel products. In so doing, we have continued to ensure that the output characteristics of the Handy Brand™ range of products are aligned to market changes and customer needs. The manufacturing and supply chain operations have been continually refined and are both mature and stable thus enabling us to effectively and efficiently service both nationally as well as cross-border African state-based customers. Flame is the only South African based manufacturer that offers a fully comprehensive range across all product types, i.e. Gel, solid and wick based chafer fuel products. 

Flame originally operated out of rented premises based in Honeydew in Gauteng. In 2008 a decision was taken to design and build a “purpose built” factory to extend our manufacturing capability in line with market demand. A property was identified in Muldersdrift (Rietfontein) as being ideally situated for the building of a factory as well as geographically well placed to service current and prospective new customers. Given the nature of our business, a number of industry experts were consulted, and environmental impact assessments performed and approved to ensure that the highest possible standards were achieved. In addition Flame has a Cape Town based operation that services the Western, Northern and Eastern Cape regions. 

In addition to environmental compliance, all fire and safety requirements necessary for the manufacture of our products were extensively investigated and implemented, thereby ensuring compliance with all legislative requirements. In addition, all staff are fully trained and equipped to deal with any environmental, fire or medical emergency that may occur.

Flame has a national and sub-Saharan footprint that is made possible through key partnerships with our distributors. These include all provinces within South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana.

We continually strive to identify and add additional products to our product offering. Each new product addition is taken through a rigorous design, development and/or investigation process before it qualifies to be part of the Handy Brand™ range. We further expanded our product range in the latter half of 2015 to include imports of non-woven cloths that were rapidly adopted by our customers and extended our reach into alternate markets, over and above the standard chafer fuel and lamp oil realm. 

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and in response to customer demand, Flame further diversified into the manufacture of hand sanitiser in May 2020. As with all of our products our Handy-San product range went through a rigorous research, design and testing phase to ensure compliance with the minimum requirements as set out by the World Health Organisation. Handy-San was independently tested under Bureau Veritas and holds all related accreditation and SDS information. Safety comes first!!

The continued growth of the company has resulted in the ongoing creation of full time positions providing much needed employment stability and benefits for our employees. We are proud that our staff are primarily representative of the local communities within which the company operates and serves. 

We are incredibly fortunate to have an amazing team that collectively work every day towards the manufacture and supply of “great products” to “great customers”. Their depth of knowledge and experience is what makes us great!