ACTOM has acted swiftly by instituting austerity measures in an effort to preserve cash and business sustainability. I would like to thank all of our employees for their understanding with regards the tough decisions which needed to be taken. We have also undertaken various restructuring initiatives in the business in order to right-size in accordance with our current economic climate.
My condolences go out to the families of our four colleagues, Andries Ndlovu (M&C), Dawood Patterson (ACTOM Energy), Bethuel Motsai (EPC) and Archie Arendse (John Thompson Boilers), who we have lost to Covid-19. I’d like to pay tribute to their contributions to the business during their many years of service.
As the government has eased lockdown regulations over the past months it is of utmost priority that we retain our health and safety protocols relating to Covid-19 in order to prevent the spread of infections.
We have seen in various countries a tendency for infections to spread quite drastically as lockdowns were eased. As such, we cannot become complacent and drop our guard, so we need to be cautious and as proactive as possible to avoid exposure to this virus, which may be in our midst for some time.
Economic conditions remain very tough in South Africa and globally. It is worth noting that our President has acknowledged the importance of infrastructure projects which will be prioritised together with various initiatives to strengthen South Africa’s generating capacity.
There has been particular focus on supporting local companies by way of product designation which will help manufacturing companies like ourselves. We hope that this will stimulate the industrial economy and thereby lead to job creation.
ACTOM has endured and sustained itself through a very tough period and that has been achieved by all stakeholders working together. I’d like to commend all members of our staff and management for the marked improvement in the statistics relating to health, safety, risk, environment and quality over the past year.
The past year has seen ACTOM involved as a major product supplier to various renewable energy projects in South Africa as part of the programme to increase the renewable energy mix into South Africa’s generation capacity. I would like to commend our teams on what has been achieved on these projects. An exhample of such an operational wind farm is as depicted in the accompanying video below.
We’ve done extensive work in terms of increasing our capacity to position ACTOM for the manufacture of more product for renewable energy projects, which we foresee growing quite extensively over the next 10 years.
Export initiatives over the past year have been seriously constrained due to travel restrictions, but this has however been well supplemented by various products and services diversification initiatives. I would like to commend our various management teams for the innovation that has been displayed in achieving this.
Our John Thompson business has been awarded an interesting milestone contract which encompasses the operation and maintenance of a 25MW biomass power plant.
The team is commended for their innovation in piloting such a project, which will realise opportunities for the broader ACTOM group.
I would like to wish all staff a wonderful festive season and a blessed New Year. 2020 has been an exceptionally challenging year from all perspectives and I hope we will start to see some improvement in 2021.
Mervyn Naidoo
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