The devastating effects of COVID-19 continued to dominate every aspect of life in South Africa – and around the world – during the second half of 2021.
Not only has the disease had – and continues to have – a marked impact on our economy and made conditions in the ACTOM group’s business sector extremely challenging, with a major slowdown in capital projects, but it has also resulted in major logistics delays, increased costs and shortages of raw materials.
Tragically it has also taken a heavy toll in lives. Within the group, I’m sad to say, we’ve lost another seven colleagues in the pandemic’s third wave.
We also sadly this year lost Garth McEwan, our previous Group Financial Director and Chief Operations Officer, who served in those capacities for many years. I pay tribute to him for everything that he did.
It is pleasing to note that government’s vaccine drive has been gaining momentum and it is absolutely critical that all South Africans heed the request to be vaccinated, as they need to do so for the protection of all our society.
We have seen many customers opt to sweat existing assets, resulting in increased activity in the repair and services businesses, while the manufacturing businesses had major challenges to deal with.
As if the negative effects of COVID-19 haven’t been enough for us to have to cope with, the unrest, incidents of violence, looting and damage to property that occurred in July this year added to our woes by shattering investor confidence and further slowed down capital projects.
We were further challenged by a strike that occurred in our industry in October, which lasted three weeks, with violence, intimidation, damage to property and several incidents of assault taking place. I am deeply saddened by this behaviour and extreme criminality, which are unacceptable. This had a major disruptive impact on our business and also to our customers.
But as we continue to soldier on unbowed in the face of multiple challenges, there are at least three “green shoots” already burgeoning forth that provide some sound reasons to be more hopeful about what the future holds. These are:
- Round 5 of the Independent Power Producer (IPP) renewable energy programme will be positive in stimulating demand for manufactured product and economic growth.
- Old Mutual recently became ACTOM’s largest investor (58% shareholding) after buying out the shares of Actis and Rand Merchant Bank. This gives us a major shareholder that will support investment towards growing the business and paves the way forward for expansion of the group geographically together with product and service diversification.
- We are also currently busy with various acquisition initiatives, the details of which I will announce in due course.
And while we’re speaking in a positive vein, let me take the opportunity to congratulate Chris Bezuidenhout and his management team on their recent exceptional success in further growing ACTOM Turbo Machines in leaps and bounds, despite the most challenging operating conditions.
We have fared very well from a health & safety perspective across the group. I would like to thank our management teams and all staff for their efforts and commitment over the past year, which has been an extremely challenging period.
I am confident that 2022 will be a better year for South Africa and our business. As we head into the holiday season, please be vigilant and adhere to COVID-19 regulations and precautions so that we avoid a repeat of the infection spread which happened last year.
I would like to wish all staff and their families a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year.
Mervyn Naidoo
