South Africa consumes well over 200 million pairs of footwear a year, yet imports the overwhelming majority — leaving a deep, policy-supported opportunity for competitive, locally-integrated manufacturing across safety and industrial, school, and casual and lifestyle leather footwear. Vela Footwear captures this with a vertically-integrated plant in the eThekwini–Pietermaritzburg corridor running three complementary product lines. A blended R331-million capital stack — sponsor and strategic equity (R98 million), a CTFLGP capital grant (R18 million), senior commercial term debt (R80 million), an IDC concessional facility (R50 million) and a revolving facility, with both term facilities carrying a two-year capital grace period — funds an approximately sixteen-month build and ramp that scales revenue from R192 million to R769 million by Year 5, lifts the EBITDA margin from 0.9% to 17.7%, supports 875 direct jobs and delivers a 41.9% base-case project IRR (26.3% in the downside) on a 4.5× base-case exit.