The announcement was made by Chairman Andries Mthethwa as part of the Executive Committee Meeting (EXCO) held at the the group’s head office at Knights on 25 November. The announcement is usually made at the group’s annual review, however, due to the COVID-19 restrictions it was presented at the EXCO this year.
The annual review will take place during quarter 1 of 2021 where Dr Azar Jammine, head of the well-known Johannesburg based economic consultancy, Econometrix, will do a presentation on the economic conditions in South Africa with particular reference to the electrical supply sector of industry.In announcing Electrical Equipment as winner of the Chairman’s Award for being the best performing division in the group, Andries said it is the first time it has won since the inception of the Award in 2012.
“We have always regarded Electrical Equipment as the barometer of trading conditions for the group as a whole, so this achievement says a lot for the prospects of the group in the foreseeable future, despite the continuing adverse economic conditions we were faced with during the past financial year. This however was prior to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic which has hit us since, making conditions even more challenging than before,” Andries commented.
He commended Rod Penaluna, Divisional CEO, and his management team on their success, commenting in particular on the successes achieved by Electrical Products in diversifying into supplying product to the local power line erection sector and in substantially increasing export sales into Eswatini, Botswana and other neighbouring countries. A further achievement to the division’s credit was the recent restructuring of Satchwell Controls, which has helped to make it more profitable.
The divisions are assessed according to a range of performance criteria, which include EBIT growth, free cash flow conversion, export orders, B-BBEE level, risk management, lost time injury frequency rate and environmental considerations. Medium Voltage & Protection, last year’s winner of the Chairman’s Award, came a close second to Electrical Equipment and was awarded the Runner-up Award this year, while three other divisions, John Thompson, Distribution Transformers and Power Conversion earned Divisional Certificates of Excellence for performing exceptionally well.
The separate competition for group business units, which are chosen from a short list based on meeting their budgets and on EBIT growth, ended with three units being selected as winners out of six contenders, the main factor taken into consideration in their selection being the extent to which they succeeded in converting profit into cash during the review period. The recipients of Business Unit Certificates of Excellence were LH Marthinusen Durban, Metalplus and ACTOM Transport. Finally, Francois Marais, Senior Design Engineer at John Thompson’s Industrial Watertube Boilers business unit, was named winner of the Certificate of Recognition for the Best What’s Watt Semi-technical Article 2019 for his article published in the June 2019 issue of the magazine entitled “Application of machine learning algorithms in boiler plant root cause analysis”.
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