Manufacturing

New sectors are arising from the green economy.

and chemical production occurs in the southern Highveld region clustered around Sasol’s plants. The Sasol chemicals and liquid fluids complex at Secunda is a vital component of Mpumalanga’s manufacturing sector. Also in the southern section is the town of Standerton which hosts several large manufacturing plants. Chief among these are a chickenprocessing facility and two mills, one for textiles and the other for crushing soy.

The assembly of solar-voltaic panels, building bases and towers for wind turbines and making equipment required for batteries – these are all areas where there might be potential for new manufacturing jobs as Mpumalanga’s economy starts to transition to renewable energy.

Containerised mini-grids are being already being assembled in the workshops of the Komati Power Station, which was decommissioned in 2022. Because the site is serviced by the transmission grid, it will also be converted into a generation site for 150MW of solar, 70MW of wind and 150MW of storage batteries, which will create the potential for other manufacturing enterprises to locate there. Camden Power Station (pictured), near the town of Ermelo and also scheduled for decommissioning, could be the site of similar activities.

The Mpumalanga Provincial Government is working with the Presidential Climate Commission, the Climate Investment Fund and the World Bank to find ways to diversify the local economy. A key objective of the Mpumalanga Economic Growth and Development Path (MEGDP) is to expand the industrial base of the provincial economy. From steel to chemicals, petroleum and stainless steel to paper and fruit juice, Mpumalanga makes a wide variety of products. Fuel, petroleum

Astral Foods’ Goldi processing plant has its own breeding and hatching operation and a processing capacity of approximately 1.8-million broilers per week. The company has won a court order to compel the local municipality to supply services after Astral’s production levels were disrupted by intermittent water and electricity supply. Goldi is the largest employer in Standerton.

Standerton Mills designs, manufactures and finishes yarn and woven industrial fabrics. The company, which was established in 1947, integrates aspects of manufacturing across a variety of technical fabrics and yarn, offering a stand-alone or fully integrated end-to-end service which includes designing, spinning, twisting, weaving and coating.

COFCO International’s soy-crushing plant in Standerton has 120 employees and is the biggest facility of its kind in South Africa. The company has more than 11 000 employees worldwide and is active on all continents. Feedstock for the plant comes from partner farms and third parties to produce oil and soy meal for animal feed. Work on efficiency and other improvements at the plant has led to a doubling in volumes processed.

Standerton falls within the Maize Triangle that touches four provinces. Within that area COFCO operates a 30 000-hectare contract farming operation which provides soybeans to the Standerton facility and maize for domestic consumption.

The northern Highveld area, including Middelburg and eMalahleni (Witbank), is home to ferro-alloy, steel and stainlesssteel concerns.

In the Lowveld, agricultural and forestry products are processed while Sappi’s giant mill is close to the company’s forests south-west of the provincial capital, Mbombela. Timber firm and board manufacturer PG Bison is in the process of spending more than R2-billion on increasing capacity at its Mkhondo plant.

TSB Sugar runs two large mills and produces fruit juices through a subsidiary company. Nelspruit is the centre of the province’s foodprocessing cluster. Approximately 70% of jobs in the manufacturing sector are in food and forestry.

Steelmaking is a key strategic industry for South Africa, representing 1.5% of the country’s GDP and accounting for about 190 000 jobs. According to the South African Iron and Steel Institute (SAISI), the South African steel industry value chain multiplies the value of local iron ore by a factor of four. Middelburg-based Columbus Stainless is South Africa’s only producer of stainless-steel products.

The dtic’s Agro Processing Support Scheme (APSS) includes furniture manufacture as a core sector for future growth and

Highveld Industrial Park: www.highveldindustrialpark.co.za

Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency: www.mega.gov.za

South African Furniture Initiative: www.furnituresa.org.za

South African Iron and Steel Institute: www.saisi.co.za support. Average employment per manufacturer is 13 people per facility. Furntech White River is a part of the Seda Technology Programme of the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda).

The Furniture Sector Forum has become an annual event, the fourth of which was held in 2022. At the event, government incentives and ideas about how to reduce the cost of expensive machinery through co-ownership and partnerships are shared, together with other strategic ideas. The first forum was co-hosted by the South African Furniture Initiative (SAFI), Proudly South African, PG Bison and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic). A national Furniture Industry Master Plan (FIMP) was adopted in 2021, which subsequently led to the reorganising of SAFI into seven chambers.

Enaex Africa, the new joint venture comprising Enaex and what used to be Sasol Explosives, will spend R16million on a facility to assemble detonators in Secunda. The facility is intended to produce 800 000 detonators per annum. Enaex, a subsidiary of the Sigdo Koppers Group, is the controlling partner in the JV. ■