As you all know, this year marks our 120th year celebrations. This is a key milestone in ACTOM’s history. The group, through its divisional portfolio of manufactured products and after-market repairs and services, has done incredibly well in navigating through various economic cycles.
We are all aware that the world economy remains highly volatile and fluid, as we have seen high inflation rates, triggering increased interest rates, with major recession risks in many large economies. This has resulted in reduced commodity pricing, which ultimately has an adverse impact on the South African economy. Our current economic situation as a country is dire, with major pressures on government and the fiscus.
The country is experiencing major challenges across energy, logistics and security, with major service delivery challenges across many municipalities. Our unemployment levels remain challenging and inequality prevails.
Despite the bleak macro-economic situation in South Africa, ACTOM as a group has fared exceptionally well, as we’ve seen some industry segments triggering increased demand for our group’s products and services. We’ve particularly seen increased activity levels stemming out of independent power producer (IPP) generation projects, as well as increased activity levels for products in the transmission and distribution sectors. This increased demand has yielded increased factory loading across the various divisions.
ACTOM has tactically been increasing factory capacity in various areas of the business to cater for the predicted increased demand. The weakened rand positions the company and the local manufacturing industry well for local manufacture and exports.
It is imperative that we as South Africa Inc. use the infrastructure spend that is required in our country to resuscitate industrialisation and create desperately needed jobs and thereby increase our economically active population and so stimulate GDP growth.
ACTOM is in the process of developing a larger training centre at the Driehoek site which will be operational early in 2024. This will give us the capacity to make a greater impact on the development of skills, bearing in mind that we have a youth unemployment rate of 75% in the country.
We find ourselves and our operations facing electricity load-shedding, as well as occasional water shortages. The ACTOM group is actively involved in rolling out backup power and alternative energy sources (solar power), as well as water storage systems, to mitigate the risks which exist and also to ensure the sustainability of our business. We have also as a group made good progress in strengthening the balance sheet of the company, which is key to business sustainability.
We have also this year concluded the acquisition of a manufacturing business in Kenya, which is a key strategic platform for entry of the group’s full product and service offerings into the East African market, which has a population in excess of 400-million people.
Our health and safety performance is currently at a LTIFR of 0,39. I would like to commend everybody for maintaining a safe working environment.
ACTOM continues to actively engage and impact positively on our neighbouring communities and informal settlements. We have in this year developed and executed a project called Izintombi Zodwa that manufactures clothing for our company.
Despite the hardships and challenges that we encounter as South Africans, we are a resilient nation, with hope for a positive future for all. This can only be achieved by us standing together as a nation.
I’d like to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year and I thank you for all your hard work and commitment over the past year.
Mervyn Naidoo