Cape Art

Cape Art is a family business that we’ve built and operated for many years in our home country of South Africa. We’ve developed a method of producing lightweight concrete casting that stands up to freezing and thawing conditions. It’s always been our goal to expand to the US. Now our son and daughter have joined the business full time, we’ve sold our own manufacturing operation and want to put the dream into action. We did suffer a setback a few years ago in the USA when an individual we’d entered into a project with failed to do his part and we lost all the molds and a good deal of time. But that was then. Now we’re excited to share our experience with the American concrete industry.


Having sold our own manufacturing operation here in SA, we’ve been devoting our time to making new designs, molds and training other manufacturers in our method. That experience is what we’d like to bring to the US. We understand that there have been a few “Lightweight Concrete” ideas floated in the past which just didn’t pan out. It doesn’t matter how light or beautiful it is if it won’t hold up or is too expensive and time consuming to produce. Our method uses regular portland cement and is extremely strong.


Having attended the fall show at The Concrete Lady a few years ago and been involved in Facebook conversations as well as visiting with several veteran Concreters we see that there are lots of family businesses out there. The economy is tight everywhere and none of us working folks have a lot of money to venture on a “maybe” kind of thing. What we’d like to offer is this; You put up no money at the front end. We come to a producers facility and bring our molds. We train the producer or his staff to use our method in every aspect. From casting to stains, paint effects, (all made on site and extremely economical) we walk you through it for as long as it takes for you to feel totally competent. We’ll source the specialized products for the casting in your area and acquaint you with all aspects of the process. We provide our own lodging, meals etc. The only money involved is the sale of the products we produce during the training. You as the producer will be asked to pay for the material and we will ask only the revenue of the sales of the products we make while we’re there. If you decide at anytime that you’ve changed your mind or just want us out of your hair we will simply load up our molds and the product we’ve made to date and leave. No hard feelings and no loss for either party. If you go through with the program and choose to carry on then the molds will be available for you to rent or buy as you choose. They are specialized all fiberglass molds and last nearly forever with reasonable use.


So what do we hope to get out of this. We know from long experience that the qualities of the product will speak for themselves. You’ll not only like the result but may decide to direct a large part of your operation toward it. It’s at that time that we feel confident you’ll be in the market for new designs and more molds. That’s where we really want to concentrate our efforts. Win Win! We’re set up to do molds very economically in SA and can quickly produce specialized designs , with 400 designs already available.


Debra Mata Castro, formally Debra Turk, a well known sculptor in the concrete industry there has been over here to SA and learned our methods, both of making concrete and having a good time. She’ll be available on the US side to field any questions and do any troubleshooting that may come up.


It’s obvious that there are lots of scams and ripoffs out there and we all have learned to be wary of strangers bearing gifts. We hope to make our dreams of bringing the products we’re very proud of to the US and making us all a brighter future. If you feel like you could put up with a South African or two around the yard for a while we’d love to hear from you and will do our best to make it a very positive decision. We can only accommodate one or two manufacturers per season. We just need to practice driving on the wrong side of the road before we take on that USA traffic.