South Africa Magazine Issue 34

forget?

PEOPLE CULTURE TRAVEL PROPERTY BUSINESS WINE SPORT ENTERTAINMENT

Battle to save Namib’s coastlineA look at the Namibian Dolphin Project

Intdev Internet TechnologiesIntdev on hiring trail following strategic expansion

JSE celebrates 125 yearsThe “engine room” of the economy celebrates major milestone

Abax InvestmentsNow is a great time to evaluate your investment portfolios

ISSUE 34 R40.00

A Y E A R T O

2012 was largely a year to forget. But was it all bad?

2012...

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Afcon 2013 kicks offOur last issue featured a full preview of the 2013 African Cup of Nations, which kicked off on January 19. We’ve been looking forward to the tournament for some time now and the opening ceremony didn’t disappoint (despite the heavy rain in Joburg which put paid to preparations that had gone on for months by the more than 570 performers).

The tournament has been a mixed bag generally for African football, with low attendances (not at Bafana games though!) and few goals. But it could still prove to be a highly successful tournament for Bafana Bafana (dare we believe?). Following a superb 2-2 draw with North African giants Morocco on Jan 27, the hosts won Group A and qualified for the knockout stage for the first time in 11 years. It was a remarkable turnaround for a side that was heavily criticised following the opening game against minnows Cape Verde, which ended in a draw. Perhaps that results wasn’t so bad after all? Cape Verde also progressed to the knockout stage.

Bafana will play the runner up of Group B in Durban on Feb 2. “We feel very, very proud to have achieved our first objective. I must thank the players and the fans,” said Bafana coach Gordon Igesund.

It’s fair to say South Africa are exceeding expectations and their exploits on the pitch have brought some much-needed joy. In the business world, things have pretty much picked up where 2012 left off – with strikes.

We’ve had Amplats workers strike over plans to mothball two South African mines and the Western Cape transformed into a warzone as farm workers press for better pay and conditions.

This month we bring you all the company profiles you come to expect and look at growth in Africa’s reinsurance market, investment opportunities, and technology trends, amongst others.

We’ve also got some interesting columns for you and a look back at 2012.

We hope you enjoy the magazine.

Ian Armitage Editor

EDITorIAl Editor Ian Armitage

Sub editor Marie Toms

Editorial AssistantClare Durrant

Writer Susan Miller

BuSINESSAdvertising Sales Manager Matt Syder

SalesDonovan SmithEddie Clinton

research ManagerStuart Shirra

researchers Elle WatsonStuart PlattTom LloydMichael Fair

Sales administrator Daniel George

AccouNTSFinancial Administrator Suzanne Welsh

ProDucTIoN & DESIgNMagazine design Optic Juice

Production manager Jon Cooke Images: Getty, Thinkstock News: NZPA, AAP, SAPA

DIgITAl & ITHead of digital marketing & development Hammit Saka

TNT MulTIMEDIAcEo Kevin Ellis

chairman Ken Hurst

Managing Director David Alstin

Publisher TNT Multimedia Ltd

TNT Multimedia Limited, Unit 209, 16 Brune Street, London E1 7NJ

tntmagazine.com

ENquIrIESTelephone: +44 (0) 207 989 0491 Fax: +44 (0) 1603 [email protected]

SuBScrIPTIoNS Call: +44 (0) 1603 [email protected]

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News

covEr

2012... a year to forget?2012 was largely a year to forget. But was it all bad?

FocuS NATURE

The battle to save Namib’s coastlineWith unemployment high and industrialisation increasingly likely, the race is on to save Namibia’s coastlines

FocuS TECHNOLOGY

Fighting for its spotTechnology as a strategic imperative gains momentum with emerging trends

FocuS JSE

125 years and countingThe “engine room” of the economy celebrates a major milestone

FocuS MONEY

Finance column Forex: If you want better than your bank, don’t use your bank

FocuS ENERGY

Howden aims for new heights Howden Africa has its eye on growing its markets

FocuS INSURANCE

Continental Reinsurance Becoming the premier pan-African insurer

FocuS TECHNOLOGY

Intdev Internet Technologies Local business success story Intdev has been on the acquisition trail


Contents

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FocuS

FUND MANAGEMENT

Abax InvestmentsInvesting in 2013: is now the time to evaluate your portfolio?

FocuS PROPERTY

Sable HoldingsThe property market recovery is exciting Sable Holdings’ MD Gavin Bowes

Joshco Providing affordable, safe and clean housing in Johannesburg

FocuS CONSTRUCTION

BigenWe look at one of South Africa’s leading engineering companies

FocuS EVENTS

Events calendar Highly recommended events

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Business

Implats cedes ZImplats stake

impala Platinum, the world’s second largest platinum producer, will sell a majority stake in its Zimbabwean unit Zimplats to local black investors, bringing the long-running saga to an end.

“Implats is pleased to announce that its...subsidiary, Zimplats, has concluded a non-binding term sheet in respect of proposed indigenisation implementation plans with the government of Zimbabwe,” the company announced.

Implats chief executive officer Terence Goodlace said that the agreement underlines the company’s commitment to “good corporate citizenship”.

It also “lays the foundation for the creation of a sustainable Zimbabwean

platinum mining company capable of attracting the investment needed to deliver future benefits to our shareholders, the people of Zimbabwe, our employees and the local community,” he said in a statement.

The deal, which will see Implats pocket R8.3 billion, is in compliance with a controversial indigenisation law which Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe signed in 2010 to force foreign-owned companies to cede 51 percent ownership to black Zimbabwean investors.

Zimplats announced in March that it had agreed to sell the stake and had since been in talks to work out terms of the deal.

It will keep the remaining 49 percent.

All the latest news from South Africa


Business

BusInessman owes oR tamBo R42,000 foR unpaId paRkIngA parking ticket can ruin anyone’s day, but imagine one attached with a bill for R42,700.

That’s exactly what a businessman owes OR Tambo International Airport for parking his car there for over 12 months.

According to The Star, Desmond Grootboom, a businessman who lives in both Johannesburg and Cape Town, left his Renault Clio on November 8, 2011 and gave his friend the car keys and the parking ticket. His friend lost the ticket but did not inform Mr Grootboom.

“I never checked with him,” he told the newspaper.

The car remained at OR Tambo airport parking for 14 months.

The licence disc on the vehicle had also expired - and a R500 fine was placed on the windscreen.

Ramaphosa uRges BusIness to Be moRe InclusIveLonmin director and Anc deputy president cyril Ramaphosa has urged the country to rally behind the national Development Plan and has called on business to become more “inclusive” and caring to avoid another Marikana.

At one of his first public appearances since his election in December, Mr Ramaphosa told a breakfast of business leaders in KZN that the National Development Plan needed “proactive” business people who were prepared to work for South Africa.

Mr Ramaphosa said the Marikana tragedy, where 44 people died during a violent strike in August at a Lonmin mine, was partly because “mining companies closed their eyes to being inclusive”.

“Marikana, in many ways, should be seen as a wake-up call to many business entities. In many ways, it should be a turning point for

all of us,” Ramaphosa said. “Where we were not

doing anything actively about improving the living conditions of workers, [businesses] should go back to the drawing board and ask themselves: ‘What is it that we can do to make sure that we improve the livelihoods and the living conditions of the people?’

“My real call is ask yourselves what it is that you can do to be as inclusive as possible — in your own businesses and business more broadly — to include many more players in the economy.”

He added that, “[Businesses] should go beyond just paying people. We should start asking ourselves where they live ... Human beings are not commodities. Companies need to look at livelihoods of their workers on a [holistic] basis and that will make companies much better corporate citizens of South Africa.”

Lifestyle


gm consolIdates

afRIcan opeRatIonsAuto giant General Motors (GM) is consolidating its sub-saharan Africa and north Africa operations into a new unit, GM Africa.

Mario Spangenberg, the current president and MD of GM North Africa, will become president and MD of GM Africa and will be based at GM Africa’s headquarters in Port Elizabeth. He will also be responsible for GM South Africa (GMSA).

Tarek Atta will become MD of GM Egypt and North Africa.

Edgar Lourençon, who has served as MD of GM South Africa (GMSA) and president of GM sub-Saharan Africa since November 2009, will assist in the transition and repatriate to South America later this year, said GM. He will report to Mark Barnes, GM International Operations vice president, Sales, Marketing and Aftersales, and chief country operations officer, Africa and Australia.

“Bringing our operations in Africa together will enable us to take advantage of synergies across the continent,” said GM global manufacturing VP Tim Lee, who also served as GMIO president. “It will put GM in a strong position to expand in a part of the world that has tremendous long-term potential for vehicle sales growth.”

GM does business in more than 50 markets in Africa, and has manufacturing operations in South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. In 2012, the US manufacturer sold 180,493 vehicles in Africa, an increase of 17.5 percent from the previous year.

Business

faRm pRotests causIng ‘IRRepaRaBle

damage’ to BRand sasouth Africa’s investor image is again being tainted by strikes.

Violent strikes by Western Cape farm workers have resulted in numerous arrests.

Workers want wages to double to R150 a day.Cosatu said it had “exhausted its social and

political capital” in trying to find a solution to the current upheaval.

Worryingly, it said the protests were “out of its hands”.

Few farm workers actually belong to a union. “The workers have said they will not go

back to work until their demands are met. This entire area will now burn to the ground until a solution is found.... I do not know whether a solution will be found,” Cosatu Western Cape secretary Tony Ehrenreich said at a press conference.

Agricultural Business Chamber CEO John Purchase said the farm strikes were doing “irreparable damage to brand South Africa”.

“It will definitely affect investor sentiment. It is not just agriculture and the Western Cape that will suffer, but the whole of South Africa.”

The Fitch ratings agency responded by lowering South Africa’s sovereign credit rating, citing political tensions and subdued growth. The rating was cut by one notch to BBB.

While some striking workers have returned to the negotiating table, there were reports that action was spreading.

Fears over another Marikana mount.


Business

amplats consIdeRIng huge joB cuts In south afRIcaAnglo American Platinum (Amplats) could cut up to 14,000 jobs in a major restructuring of its strike-hit south African operations, the firm says.

The platinum producer plans to close four shafts and sell a mine considered unsustainable, it said in a statement.

“As a result of the proposed changes to the business, a total of up to 14,000 jobs may be affected, 13,000 of which will be in the Rustenburg area,” the company said.

“As a result, the production profile will be reduced by approximately 400,000 ounces per annum with a baseline production target of 2.1-2.3 million ounces per annum.

“The Union Mines are likely to be of greater value under different ownership.”

The company recently filed a profit warning with the JSE, telling investors to expect huge losses when it publishes its full end of year results in February.

Amplats said operations in South Africa had been unsustainable “for some time”, blaming capital intensity, low-quality ore and rising costs.

Mineworkers demands for higher wages crippled South Africa’s mining industry last year and reduced Amplats production by around 306,000 ounces.

CEO Chris Griffith told Talk Radio 702 that the strikes did not prompt this decision.

“The strikes were not the reason for us having to restructure the company,” he said.

amplats wIldcat stRIke ends Workers at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) have returned to duty, ending a 24-hour wildcat strike over company proposals to close mines and retrench employees.

Amplats’ Khuseleka Mine 1 and 2 and Khomanani Mine 1 and 2 were affected by the strike involving more than 14,000 workers.

The world’s No. 1 platinum producer had earlier said it would likely fall to a full-year loss because of last year’s costly strikes and then announced plans to close four shafts and sell a mine considered unsustainable – a move criticised by the government, the African National Congress and unions.

“As a result of the proposed changes to the business, a total of up to 14,000 jobs may be affected, 13,000 of which will be in the Rustenburg area,” it said.

“The production profile will be reduced by approximately 400,000 ounces per annum with a baseline production target of 2.1-2.3 million ounces per annum.

“The Union Mines are likely to be of greater value under different ownership.”

Strike committee leader Godfrey Lindani said workers would now follow the required procedures to embark on a legal strike.

“It is not that we are afraid, it is just that we want to go on a legal strike,” he said.


Nature

RhIno poachIng Reaches RecoRd levelsnew figures paint a bleak future for south Africa’s rhino.

A record 668 were killed for their horns in 2012, up almost 50 percent on the number for 2011, government data shows.

The majority of the animals were killed in the Kruger national park, with growing demand for rhino horn in Asia driving the slaughter.

Around three quarters of the world’s rhino population is in South Africa. Since 2007, when just 13 animals were lost to poachers, the killing has increased substantially, with huge demand for horns from countries like China and Vietnam. They believe the rhino horn has medicinal powers and can impact diseases like cancer.

Horns can sell for around $65,000 a kg.

Five rhinos have been killed since the start of this year according to the government.

Africa

ZIm IndIgenIsatIon: Banks next In lIne mInIsteR saysfollowing what Harare describes as the completion of its programme to “indigenise” mines, the Zimbabwean government has turned its attention to foreign banks and is warning them to hand over 51 percent of their shares to locals.

President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party has adopted empowerment policy as a rallying point in its campaign for looming elections, ignoring calls to the contrary from investors, economists and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

After the signing of Impala Platinum’s indigenisation deal for its Zimplats unit, Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said the next target was the banking sector.

“My full attention is now on the foreign banks. Tell them that Kasukuwere says that there is nothing special about them,” he said. Foreign banks were free to leave Zimbabwe if they did not want to comply with empowerment laws.

“We now have the money and we will pay for their assets and ask them to leave,” he said.

Foreign banks operating in Zimbabwe include Standard Bank, Barclays, the Nedbank-owned MBCA Bank and Standard Chartered.


Africa

afRIcan RegIon to gRow 6.6%sub-saharan Africa, south Africa excluded, can expect economic growth of 6.6 percent on average in 2013, African Development Bank president Donald kaberuka says.

“The dynamic is good, there are risks in the global environment, but providing there is no worsening in the current situation we remain completely optimistic about the future,” he told Business Day in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was meeting with counterparts from the African Union (AU) Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

“Now, if you include South Africa, because of its weight — that is 30 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s economy — the number goes down to 5.4 percent. But the predictions are still quite good.”

He said that he remained “extremely bullish” about South Africa. “I don’t partake in these pessimistic stories about South Africa. One has to take the longer-term view and contextualise it.”

kaRIBa south expansIon

hIts a snagThe deal between Zimbabwe Power company (ZPc) and chinese-owned sinoHydro for the expansion of kariba south power station has been delayed amid fears the deal document breached procurement regulations.

The delay will affect work on the expansion of the power station, which was expected to increase power generation by 300MW. The state procurement board is now investigating.

According to reports, at issue is the concern of SinoHydro about changes to the deal document,

including an increase from the initial $355 million quote to $390 million, for “contingencies”, seemingly added by ZPC without consultation.

Regulations stipulate that ZPC must first seek authorisation from the state procurement board for any price changes.


Sport

pRoteas celeBRate InnIngs vIctoRy oveR new Zealand

south Africa’s fast bowlers Dale steyn and Morne Morkel used the second new ball to devastating effect as the

Proteas completed victory by an innings and 197 runs on the fourth day of the second and final Test against new Zealand at st George’s Park.

Steyn took 3-48 and Morne 2-36 as New Zealand were bowled out for 211 and the pair needed only a combined 34 deliveries to take the last five wickets.

Man of the match Steyn took 5-17 in the first innings to end with match figures of 8-65.

New Zealand were bowled out in what was the Black Caps’ second heavy defeat in the two-Test series after they lost the first match in Cape Town by an innings and 27 runs inside three days.

The win consolidated South Africa’s position at the top of the world rankings.

Igesund Blames playeRs foR dIsappoIntIng dRaw wIth cape veRde

following south Africa’s goalless draw with cape Verde in their Afcon 2013 opener, coach Gordon igesund took aim at his players, accusing them of losing their nerve.

Igesund, who is Bafana Bafana’s third coach hosting the 2010 World Cup, made no excuses for what was a poor display at Soccer City.

“Not too many of my players came to the party in the first half, which was a total waste of time,” he said.

“We weren’t much better in the second.“We now have to go for it in our next two games

against Angola and Morocco. Of course we wanted to win and get a goal and get all three points, and we are not doomed yet. But we need to improve.

“Credit to Cape Verde. They are a good, well-organised team and play like Europeans. They defended well, slowed the game right down in the second half and got the point they came looking for.”

The smallest company in the tournament, Cape Verde have a population of just 500,000 and are Afcon debutants.


land Issue could Be RevIsIted Zuma saysThe issue of land restitution could be revisited in the interests of socio-economic equality, President Jacob Zuma says.

“Never shall we allow a situation where that issue will result in chaos,” he said in an interview on CNBC Africa’s Political Exchange.

Zuma said he felt the law dealing with land restitution was “biased

against claimants” and he had come to realise that “even the crafting of the law was biased”.

He added that the Constitution allowed the government to take action to speed up the restitution process.

“[But] we are not going to wake up one day and say take this farm... it must deal with the needs of the country,” he said.

According to Zuma, the response of white farmers was encouraging, with many showing a willingness to discuss the issue, eager to help emerging farmers.

2013 marks a century since the introduction of the implementation of the Land Act, which deprived black South Africans of the land and cattle that formed the basis of their livelihood.

malema at It agaIn, lays chaRges agaInst ex-fRIend mamaBoloExpelled Anc Youth League leader Julius Malema has laid charges against his ex-friend, Boy Mamabolo, according to Limpopo police.

“Julius opened a case of crimen injuria on Sunday (January 13) at 7.26pm at the Polokwane police station,” Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi told the Sapa news agency.

He said police were investigating the case and were not taking the case lightly.

“Threats, we do not take them very lightly, because if someone threatens you it means they have intentions... but we also have to weigh that threat,” he said.

The Star reported that Mamabolo, in retaliation for Malema allegedly sending his

allies to sleep with Mamabolo’s girlfriend, threatened to exhume the remains of Malema’s mother and throw them in front of his grandmother’s house in Seshego.

Politics


Business

sa now chIna’s thIRd-BIggest IRon oRe supplIeRsouth Africa has overtaken india to become china’s third-biggest iron ore supplier.

In 2012, we provided 40.6 million tonnes of iron ore, up 12 percent compared to 2011, while Indian imports declined 54.74 percent to 33 million tonnes.

India’s share of total imports into China has been

in steady decline for several years, falling from 23 percent in 2006 to just 4.4 percent last year.

There is a mining ban in Karnataka, India’s biggest iron ore producing state.

Australia is China’s top supplier. It delivered 351.5 million tonnes, or 47 percent of China’s total imports.

pRoductIon Resumes at Randgold ResouRces’

tongon mIneProduction at Randgold Resources’ Tongon mine in côte d’ivoire is returning to normal after a fire in the mill section of its plant‚ the gold miner says.

Both mill circuits are expected to be fully operational by mid-February.

Randgold chief executive Mark Bristow said the mine exemplified the company’s

long-term vision and its tenacity of purpose.

“Tongon represents the biggest single investment to date in this part of Côte d’Ivoire, and when we made that investment, we invested not only in a mine but in this country,” he said.

“We are currently exploring our extensive

tenements elsewhere in Côte d’Ivoire and we hope to discover further multi-million ounce gold deposits here and, with the support of the government, to develop these into world-class mines.”

The mine produced 210,000 ounces of gold in 2012.


Business

saa stRIkes contInue

industrial action involving more than 1,000 south African Airways staff has entered a fifth day, with news they are set to intensify.

According to local media reports on January 22, about 500 workers from the airline’s technical staff have joined in a sympathy strike.

Tensions at SAA have reached boiling point since wholesale changes in leadership at the loss-making state-owned airline last year.

The airline needed a R5 billion guarantee from the National Treasury and has since appointed new board and executive and is working on a turnaround strategy.

The National Transport Movement (NTM) - which split from the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union - has been fighting for recognition at SAA and has spearheaded the current action.

It went on an indefinite strike on January 18 after SAA’s executive and board failed to agree to grant the new union recognition.

SAA reported a R1.25 billion loss for the 2011-12 financial year.

lImpopo RaIns foRce mIne to

closefloods in Limpopo have forced coal of Africa Limited (coAL) to halt operations at its Vele colliery mine.

It hopes to resume operations within a week.

“Coal of Africa Limited advises that, following heavy rains in the Limpopo province, operations at its Vele Colliery have been forced to stop due to flooding,” CoAL said in a statement.

“CoAL expects normal operations to resume in approximately seven days, subject to receding rainfall.

“Vele currently has a 5500 tons stockpile of thermal coal product and produces 7000 saleable tons per week.”

The mine site had recorded 500mm rainfall in the past five days, compared to 450mm normal rainfall a year.


While the Mayans were wrong about the world ending on December 21, 2012 was largely a year to forget. But was it all bad?

By Susan Miller

2012… A Y E A R T OF O R G E T ?

The last 12 months were largely disappointing. 2012 was a year in which SA made international headlines for all the wrong reasons, a year in which social divisions seemed to grow, and it was tough economically.

For many it was a year to forget and, while we could draw on the negatives, we thought we’d put aside all that and celebrate some positives!

Here’s a look back at some of the things that made us happy in 2012. It wasn’t all bad.

2012... A year to forget? FocuS LIFESTYLE


oLMYPic DREAMsThe Olympic and Paralympic Squads: Big cheers for them all. We were Africa’s best performing country at 24th on the medals table.

South Africa came back with three gold, two silver and one bronze medal making the London Games our most successful since we were readmitted to the Olympics in 1992.

Who will forget amputee Oscar Pistorius lining up to take on the best in the world in the 400m semi-finals? And Castor Semenya showed us all the true meaning of courage after a horrible year, winning a silver medal in the women’s 800m.

Huge hurrahs for Chad le Clos of course, who edged Michael Phelps in the 200m butterfly to take gold - and his father Bert who became a web star after his BBC interview went viral. Chad later added a silver medal, finishing second to Phelps in the 100m butterfly - and we shouldn’t forget Cameron van der Burgh’s masterly win in the 100m breaststroke as he smashed the world record in 58.46 seconds.

Then there was the men’s lightweight fours rowing team of Matthew Brittain, Lawrence Ndlovu, John Smith and James Thompson who won our first rowing Olympic medal and canoeist Bridgitte Hartley (see issue 29) who won the bronze medal in the 500 metres K1 sprint.

ToP of THE WoRLDThe Proteas topped the world Test rankings at year-end. They were unbeaten in ten Tests (nine away from home) and Graeme Smith, who scored a ton in his 100th Test at The Oval in London, is now the most capped Test captain of all-time. Let’s not forget Hashim Amla, who became the first South African to score a Test triple hundred. We’ll all treasure his 311 not out made at The Oval.

The Proteas won the World No 1 ICC Test ranking from England in July and held off the Aussies Down Under to hold onto it.

Bouquets to the whole squad!


Boks HoLD THEiR oWnRugby: The Boks ended an unspectacular year (by their standards) on a relative high by remaining unbeaten on their tour of Europe. They were ranked second in the world

rankings after starting the season at fourth. ‘New’ coach Heyneke Meyer’s first year in charge ended with seven wins in 12 starts.

Onwards and upwards in 2013!

cAPE ToWn RocksCape Town: Cape Town is gloriously beautiful and the city confirmed this by winning Africa’s Leading Beach Destination 2012 in the annual World Travel Awards, which also awarded a string of accolades to South African tourism brands. Cape Town beat Bazaruto in Mozambique, Diani Beach in Kenya, our own Plettenberg Bay, Zanzibar Island, Tanzania and previous winner, Sharm El Sheikh, in Egypt for the top beach attraction.

There’s more to celebrate. Table Mountain

was formally inaugurated in December 2012 after being voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World in 2011 in a global poll. Its new status is already bearing fruit as the mountain received a record number of visitors in November.

Table Mountain joins the Amazon rainforest, Vietnam’s Halong Bay, Argentina’s Iguazu Falls, South Korea’s Jeju Island, Indonesia’s Komodo and the Philippines’ Puerto Princesa Underground River as the newly listed wonders.

soWETo GETs A WoRLD-cLAss THEATRESoweto Theatre, R150 million of concrete, ceramic and glass with three auditoriums and 630 seats, opened its doors on 11 May.

And that’s not all that Soweto boasts – with its four-star hotel and conference centre, multiplex cinema, annual wine festival, Soweto Fashion

Week and one of southern Africa’s biggest shopping malls, the township is booming.

The first play staged was a special adaptation of Es’Kia Mphahlele’s The Suitcase with music by the legendary Hugh Masekela.

Standing ovations all around.


2012... A year to forget? FocuS LIFESTYLE

sA Wins DAncE coMPETiTion SA dominated the medals table at the IDO World Show Dance Championships in December in Germany, collecting five gold medals, four silver medals and three bronze medals. They were competing with over 3500 of the world’s best Show Dancers from 35 nations who were battling it out to be crowned World Champions.

Big bravos to Xola Willie, Kingsley Beukes and Bradley Peter who worked with their teammates to win gold medals in the Adult Formation and Small Group categories.

sEARcHinG foR sUGAR MAn2012 put us on the world map as epic Rodriquez fans with the release of this documentary about two South Africans who go on a quest to find the cult US musician Sixto Rodriguez, whose lyrics of struggle and injustice had such a huge impact on us. We loved him for the right reasons and the film has gone on to promote the man’s music and win hearts all over the world.

And it doesn’t end there – Rolling Stone voted the soundtrack to the film, a combination of the best tracks from Cold Fact and his 1971 follow up album Coming From Reality, as the No.1 reissue of 2012.

Some Cold Fact awards to Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom who started it all!

GoinG GAGAI’m not sure where you sit on the little Monsters spectrum but I found the spat between Die Antwoord and Lady Gaga amusing.

After she reportedly asked them to support her SA tour (a smash hit), they turned her down, released Fatty Boom Boom on YouTube and enjoyed a hissy twitter spat.

She tweeted: ‘i fink u freaky but you don’t have a hit. hundred thousand tIckets sold in SA. #thatmyshit.’

And: ‘i guess its not a good idea to tell someone you’re a fan. never mind! we get it, you’re not a little monster. WE GOT IT.’

They answered: ‘lady… even tho u r ‘larger’ than us… we still cooler than u… plus we don’t have prawns in our private parts.’

Say what you like but say it very quietly.And Die Antwoord toured the US last year

on their Harden da F*** Up tour, which was a sell-out! END

N amibia is home to some of the world’s most beautiful and wildest coastlines. But they are under pressure. While coastal

tourism and the fishing industry are vital to Namib, persistent structural unemployment (as a result of South Africa’s 75-year-long occupation from 1915 to 1990) is a major issue and jobs need to be created.

One project, approved in principle by government, is Gecko Group’s Vision Industrial Park, described as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunity’ for Namibia.

The economic and political pressures for such projects are considerable.

I recently spoke to Simon Elwen, the Principal Investigator of the Namibian Dolphin Project, a research and conservation project in Walvis Bay and Luderitz, about his work and the battle to balance the need for jobs against the need to protect a sensitive coastal ecology.

Founded by Simon (and Ruth Leeney) in 2008, the Namibian Dolphin Project’s core focus is carrying out research on coastal dolphins and whales in Namibian waters.


The Namibian Dolphin Project is a research and conservation project working in Walvis Bay and Lüderitz. With unemployment high and industrialisation increasingly likely, the race is on to save Namibia’s coastlines.

By Susan Miller

The battle to save Namib’scoastline

When did the project start?Dr Ruth Leeney and I ran the first pilot study in Walvis Bay in the winter of 2008. How is it linked to the University of Pretoria (UP)? I secured a post-doctoral fellowship at UP and managed to upgrade that to a Research Fellowship, investigating the conservation ecology of coastal dolphins in Southern Africa with my main focus being on the Benguela ecosystem on the west coast. Dr Tess Gridley who runs our acoustic research and is leading our surveys of the Namibian Islands Marine Protected has been awarded a Vice-Chancellors post-doctoral fellowship through UP as well. UP pays the two of us to run this research, but our research funding is from small conservation-oriented grants and through our internship programme, which we run through Oceans Research during our core field seasons.

How did you get involved?When I initially thought of this project I was doing fieldwork on bottlenose dolphins on the west coast of Scotland. I missed working in Africa and realised if I came back there was potential for me to start my own research project and make a difference in collecting valuable data. After five

years I feel that I’ve made significant progress.

How important are conservation issues in namibia?Very. Namibia is a conservation- and tourism-focused country and won the prestigious 2012 Markhor Award for Outstanding Conservation Performance.

A huge amount of its land (and almost the entire coastline) is protected as nature reserves or conservancies. However, there is vast unemployment and job creation through industrialisation is seen as one of the elixirs that will solve this. Obviously there is a great potential for conflict between these two approaches.

The battle to save Namib’s coastline FocuS NATURE


There was potential for

me to start my own research project and

make a difference

in collecting valuable data


What’s new in this conflict? One very contentious example is the recent announcement that a massive highly industrialised complex is being planned, just north of Swakopmund, in the middle of the Dorob National Park. Another big issue is the proposed mining (dredging) of phosphates off the seabed here.

Are there ways mining and conservation can complement each other?It is very difficult as the goals of mining and conservation are entirely different. Some mining companies money to conservation efforts (E.g. Foundation Total, the Rossing Foundation), and sometimes areas around mines end up being wildlife havens, such as the Sperregebiet protected diamond mining area in southern Namibia. In the last few years there has been an oil boom off Namibia with exploration going on. This is mainly done through seismic surveys, which involve loud ‘bangs’ and using the echoes to map the geology below the seabed. Loud sounds can have quite drastic effects on marine mammals.

What are your hopes for the project?We’re trying to consolidate our findings, catch up with the backlog of data and publish more to get ourselves on the international research map. We now have a five-year data series from Walvis Bay which allows us to start looking at long-term patterns in dolphin behaviour, but it takes a lot of effort to maintain and we have to find the balance between building on what we’ve got so far and starting new projects, such as our work in offshore waters and budding work with turtles in Namibia.


The battle to save Namib’s coastline FocuS NATURE

What are some of the most amazing memories you have of working with the dolphins and whales? To be honest, you often get so distracted making sure you have the photo or recording that you forget to just stop and enjoy it. I value taking people out to sea for the first time and being reminded how impressively large a whale really is.

The population of Bottlenose Dolphins is decreasing rapidly, what can be done to increase their numbers?Remove whatever threats are reducing it and hope they do the rest themselves. As very coastal animals they come into close contact with many human activities. This population of common bottlenose dolphins numbers about 100 individuals and is unique along the coast of Namibia and South Africa. If they are driven extinct they will be gone. Two major issues in conservation that are of relevance here are 1) the tragedy of the commons - no one will take responsibility for a ‘common resource’ and 2) a need to recognise that human threats do not act in isolation, but are cumulative.

Given that man is their biggest predator is it not surprising that many of the dolphins still seem so friendly?Our work in Namibia has shown a decrease in the number of bottlenose dolphins using Walvis Bay, mostly the mothers with calves which tend to hang out together, while with Heaviside’s dolphins we have picked up a pattern of boat avoidance in the more marked/scarred animals, which are presumably older, suggesting that their behaviour may modify.

What is your take on southern Africa’s conservation efforts?There is a large and passionate community of scientists, conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts working the area and I just hope that our combined voices manage to balance the very loud voice of ‘development’.

Are there regional efforts? There are many regional and international collaborations in our field.

What kind of co-operation is there between south Africa and namibia?I’m personally involved in data collection in SA as part of the work we’re doing in Namibia (it’s all one ecosystem) and I have students working in Mossel Bay and Gansbaai.

What can people do to safeguard dolphins and whales in their waters?Get involved! Go to talks, learn, volunteer, and most importantly play an active role in the environmental impact assessment process. END

www.namibiandolphinproject.com

T imes are tight and IT budgets are down, but South Africa’s chief information officers (CIOs) are still buying new technology—

but only if it delivers a genuine return on investment. I spend much of my time with customers, and over the last eight months or so, this refrain has grown in strength. It’s a good augury for South Africa’s continued competitiveness and it shows that technology has finally become strategic.

This focus on getting a genuine return on technology investment signals the perhaps long-overdue entry of IT into the real world.

It is, at least in part, a result of the fact that the CIO is finally seated at many exco tables. The King reports, especially King III, played an important role in speeding up this evolution in the CIO’s—and thus IT’s—role by putting IT squarely onto the board agenda. South African businesses have typically lagged behind their global peers in this regard.

But it’s more than that. In most industries, IT has truly become the business. It’s no longer simply the operational matrix: in the hands of somebody with the passion, imagination and understanding of the


Technology as a strategic imperative gains momentum with emerging trends. By Manoj Bhoola, managing director of Avanade South Africa

fight for its spotT E C H N O L O G Y M U S T C O N T I N U E T O

business, it is becoming transformative.

As part of their changing role, CIOs are now being given targets along with the heads of other functions like marketing, sales, supply chain and finance. These targets are almost invariably related to finding and supporting new ways of making the business more efficient (a goal that always includes cost reduction in some form or other), and new ways of expanding the business.

This tighter alignment between technology and business strategy means that whereas companies once might have automatically upgraded to the latest version of their software, for example, the purchase decision of any technology is now directly dependent on the returns it will generate. In sync with this way of thinking, technology companies are being required to deliver projects that are on time, on budget and, crucially, deliver the promised benefits to the business. Another welcome entry into the real world you might think!

But don’t for one moment imagine that IT’s growing strategic role goes hand in hand with increased budgets. As we are all coming to accept, the post-2008 business world looks set to

remain both highly volatile and hyper-competitive. I don’t know any CIOs who have had budget increases—and most have to meet these higher expectations with a budget that could be 20 percent lower than last year’s one!

Companies, in my experience, are particularly focusing on three areas—something we jokingly call the C-spot: cloud computing, collaboration and the consumerisation of IT. Cloud is looming large in most IT strategies because it can reduce costs significantly as well as give businesses the agility that is hard to come by when one buys everything. This agility is vital as new products and services need to be launched and pulled back much more quickly than in the past.

The 2010 Sandhill Group survey says that cloud will attract 70 percent of IT budgets in three to five years.[1]

Collaboration is very much a commonplace in today’s extended businesses, but it’s rapidly moving into the cloud—and not just to reduce costs. 39 percent of North American and European IT professionals say they are moving, or plan to move, collaboration into the cloud.[2] South Africans are not far behind.

Part of this move is driven by the third C, consumerisation of IT— a market trend where technology first adopted in the consumer space enters the workplace. An Avanade September 2012 survey of 599 C-level executives and IT decision-makers in 19 countries, including South Africa, shows that the “bring your own device” trend continues to take hold, with more than six in ten companies (61 percent) reporting the majority of their employees now use personal computing devices in the workplace. Putting processes and data, including collaboration tools, into the cloud makes them more accessible to anywhere, anyhow computing—and keeps it out of the corporate firewall. A significant IT investment is being made by companies to manage this trend.

These, however, are the details. The real story is how the growing realisation of IT’s strategic role and today’s business climate are driving the C-change in the way that technology is purchased. Business needs to take the role of the CIO more seriously. END

1 2010 Sandhill Group survey

2 Forrester Research, T J Keitt,

Senior Analyst, September 2011.

www.avanade.com

Technology must continue to fight for its spot FocuS TECHNOLOGY


T he JSE describes itself as the “engine room” of the South African economy, enhancing job opportunities and creating wealth.

It is the16th largest securities exchange in the world, and by far the largest of Africa’s 22 stock exchanges.

Now South Africa may not be getting much good press of late but its stock market remains promising.

Indeed, since wildcat strikes erupted across the country, the image of South Africa has been damaged thanks to a number of negative headlines.

However, the country’s equity and bond markets bucked the trend, at least until November, with the JSE hitting new highs in October.

So why is that? Well, South Africa offers investors frontier markets-type growth, but with more liquidity, more mature capital markets, greater data richness and greater transparency. Although markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana hold great potential for sustained high growth, South Africa is the most mature stock market on the continent.

Stocks that stand out are British American Tobaco and MTN - year-to-date both are up by at least 30 percent on 12 months ago.

Interested in investing?Then you need the JSE.‘South Africa is credited with being one of

the best regulated and most liquid emerging markets, as well as being Africa’s largest by far,’ the Financial Times’ Andrew England recently


JSEC E L E B R A T E S 1 2 5 Y E A R S

In November the JSE celebrated 125 years of trading. South Africa Magazine investigates.

By Ian Armitage

reported, adding, ‘Many of its companies offer exposure to the much-touted Africa growth story, even if the domestic South African investment climate is struggling.’

HAPPY BiRTHDAY JsEIn November, the stock exchange celebrated 125 years of trading. As you would imagine, it has come a long way over the last century and particularly in the last 25 years. Ranked amongst the top 20 exchanges worldwide in terms of Equity Market capitalisation, the last 25 years have seen the JSE Group acquire the South African Futures and Bond Exchanges, bring innovative products to investors on all its markets and diversify its range of services.

“From our humble beginnings, today the JSE’s total Equity Market capitalisation is over R6 trillion with about 400 companies and 907 securities (including interest rate; currency, financial and commodity derivatives) listed. Our emphasis in the last ten years has been to build a robust vertically and horizontally integrated market that offers our clients the opportunity to trade a wide range of products in a world class environment. South Africa has for three consecutive years been ranked number

one in the world in terms of securities regulation by the World Economic Forum,” says Humphrey Borkum, chairman of the JSE.

“Naturally, the success of these efforts is also due to the substantial contribution that our clients have made over the years. We look forward to working with our clients to grow our market in future,” JSE CEO Nicky Newton King adds.

To recognise this milestone, in August, the JSE donated R50,000 to Business Arts South Africa (BASA) for the Three2Six art programme which runs a holiday art programme for vulnerable refugee children at Sacred Heart College in inner city Johannesburg.

“Over 125 years, the JSE has become a critical part of the South African economy. Our industry has an important role to play in the funding of the future development of this country and we are excited by the prospects this holds,” concludes Newton King.

inTRoDUcTion of QUAnTo fUTUREs In October 2012, the JSE expanded its commodities product range by adding silver and platinum commodities to its gold, copper and Brent crude Quanto Futures.

A Quanto Future is a rand denominated commodity


South Africa is credited with

being one of the best regulated and most liquid

emerging markets, as well as being

Africa’s largest by far

JSE celebrates 125 years FocuS JSE


investment product that delivers the same payoff as a pure dollar denominated commodity investment and enables investors to gain exposure to price fluctuations in the foreign commodity while shielding them from movements in the rand and US Dollar exchange rate.

The JSE has partnered with Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) as the initial market maker with the commodities referenced as part of the JSE’s existing licensing agreement with the CME Group.

Chris Sturgess, Director of the Commodities Division at the JSE says, “The JSE is excited to offer derivative market participants this additional choice of energy and metal products in the form of Quanto Futures, yet another innovative product offered by the JSE making it that much simpler for local investors to gain access to the international commodities markets. ”

nEW TRADinG PLATfoRM ALLoWs fAsTER TRAnsAcTinG The JSE has been bold in restructuring in the light of increasingly tough global competition, adopting new technologies and outsourcing aspects of its business.

As part of that, it recently moved it trading platform from London back to Johannesburg.

“Speed is becoming increasingly important in the exchange industry due to exchanges having to cope with the rapid rise of automated trading,” says Leanne Parsons, Director: Equity Market. “Exchanges that have trading systems with the lowest latency will retain and grow market share. “

In a move that was welcomed by market participants, the JSE launched the equity trading platform, Millennium Exchange™, in July. This has resulted in increased levels of performance, functionality and capacity.

A major benefit of the system is that speed has been increased and market participants can now perform transactions at 400 times faster.

“There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that when exchanges increase their trading speeds they also boost levels of trading. This is important in order to deepen a market,” says Parsons.

According to Parsons, the system has enhanced operational efficiencies and stability and has eliminated the problem of international

Naturally, the success of these efforts is also due to the substantial contribution that our clients have made over the years. We look

forward to working with our clients to grow our market

in future


JSE celebrates 125 years FocuS JSE

connectivity link failures, which previously required the JSE’s equity market to be halted on various occasions.

This has further led to improved service availability and stability for the exchange’s clients.

“A major way in which changing requirements from JSE Equity Market clients have been addressed is through increased flexibility,” Parsons says. “The system allows for the implementation of country-specific measures. This essentially entails looking at what is needed and appropriate for the South African market specifically. Different ways of matching and conducting negotiated trades can be facilitated through the central order book. This allows clients to choose products that are best suited to their specific business models thus eliminating a one-size-fit all approach.”

The platform is housed within the JSE’s recently completed new state of the art data centre based on Tier 3 specifications and is designed to ensure 99.98 percent availability.

“As we have seen with the Borsa Italiana migration and similar migrations during the past year, the new platform provides exceptional levels of performance, functionality and capacity. The JSE’s move to the new equity system, which we have nicknamed Project Jaya meaning ‘victory‘ in the language of Sri Lanka, is a victory for the market,” Parsons concludes.

This provides the JSE with a platform to grow trading volumes and is but a fraction of new and exciting developments on the exchange. END

To learn more visit www.jse.co.za

W e live in a world of free markets and vast choice. However many people continue to tolerate

sub-standard service, extortionate fees, and costly consequences of delayed transactions when using their banks to transfer funds internationally.

Currency transfers, FX, Forex, foreign exchange, international money transfers - contrary to popular belief - really are very simple processes. Because there is a buy and a sell price, separated by what we call margin or spread, it may seem complicated to the average person in the street. Money, like anything else traded, is a commodity that has a varying price tag depending on supply and demand. The USD is currently the base currency against which all other currencies are valued, so the ZAR/GBP rate will tie back behind the scenes to the relative value of each of these currencies against the USD.

Exchange rates quoted on websites and in the media are typically the interbank rates and these represent the mid-market

point between the buy and sell prices of the relevant currency pair. So the first lesson to note is that you will never get the rate you see quoted in the media. The market is also moving continually, therefore, the rate you heard on the radio whilst driving to work can - and most likely will be - very different when you decide to make a currency purchase during your lunch break.

There are three important elements to any transaction. They are cost, expertise and customer service.

How to beat the bank? Simple answer, don’t use the bank, use a forex brokerage.

So why use us and not the bank? The detailed answer:

BETTER RATEs THAn THE BAnksWe buy large volumes of currency and like any commodity we get a big price advantage. We take a smaller margin than the bank, which means big savings for you, the customer, and hopefully an increase in loyal customers result for us.


FOREX: I F Y O U W A N T B E T T E R T H A N Y O U R B A N K … D O N ’ T U S E Y O U R B A N K

By Andrew Rissik

ExPERTisEIn a world of instant access, you do not want to wait 10 days before your money lands in the beneficiary’s bank account. We know the systems and all we do is process foreign currency transfers and guarantee cleared funds within two working days, it’s that simple. In the South African scenario, where we have a very complex exchange control framework, our skilled consultants have all the answers to the questions that may have been left unanswered by your local bank.

cUsToMER sERVicEOur consultants do one thing only, and that is to trade and process international money transfers. They are quick, efficient and very friendly. The most important aspect of service is how we deal with a mistake when we make one; after all we are only human. Our business growth is highly dependent on repeat business and referrals, so we don’t leave customer service to chance.

So next time you or your business needs to make an international payment that is simple, secure and fast; please use Sable FX. You will enjoy the experience. END

ForEX FocuS FINANCE


We buy large volumes of currency

and like any commodity we get a big price advantage. We take a smaller margin than

the bank, which means big

savings for you

Andrew Rissik, Managing Director, sable fx south AfricaSable FX specialises in foreign exchange and international remittance to and from every major global destination. Its global banking presence means that it can help source the best foreign exchange deals at the best rates and the lowest fees. It also processes payments with the shortest turnaround times possible.

Sable FX is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the UK (FSA no 517570), the Financial Services Board in SA (FSP no 41900) and the Australian Financial Services Board issued by ASIC (AFS Licence number 335 126).


newH O W D E N A I M S F O R

South Africa Magazine talks to Thomas Bärwald, the CEO of gas and air handling equipment giant Howden Africa, a regular in the

Business Times newspaper’s ‘Top 100 Companies’, which has

its eye on growing its markets through excellent engineering

and service.

By Ian Armitage

H owden is a major engineering force. Its equipment underpins economic development

on the African continent and it has played a significant role in large-scale power generation, mining, construction, petrochemical and manufacturing projects.

“We have long-term relationships with customers in many sectors of Africa’s industrial infrastructure,” says Thomas Bärwald, the CEO of the Johannesburg-based and JSE-listed Howden Africa.

Howden Africa has four main business units - Howden Power, Howden Fan Equipment, Howden Projects and Donkin Fans - offering comprehensive engineered systems and after-market support services, focusing on specific industrial sectors or product ranges.

As part of Howden Global – which has operations all over the world – the company has access to the extensive engineering knowledge derived from a worldwide installed base.

“We’re able to meet the demands of our customers, by providing solutions engineered for their specific requirements, backed by manufacturing excellence and on-site installation and technical support throughout the lifetime of each system,” Bärwald explains.

Howden Africa has two world-class manufacturing centres in South Africa, one in Johannesburg, and the other in Port Elizabeth, giving it a geographical reach that enables it to support large-scale, turnkey engineered plant and products, through most of sub-Saharan Africa.

“We specialise in the design and engineering of a wide range of

Howden Africa FocuS ENERGY




equipment and have an extensive offering,” says Bärwald. “We have an excellent reputation in the market and listen to the customer.”

Through its engineered solutions, such as ventilation systems and refrigeration plant for mines, boiler fans, airheaters and environmental control systems for power stations and general industry, and ventilation systems for HVAC systems in construction, Howden Africa has built up an enviable reputation and offers customers a personal service and presence in Africa, he adds.

“Our involvement in the development of Africa’s industrial infrastructure is matched by our commitment to the future.”

The firm has, according to Mr Bärwald, achieved “excellent results in the first half of the financial year”, with the share price “gaining 120 percent”. It’s a good performer on the JSE.

“We have secured more mining business from countries north of the border such as Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia and the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) etc,” he explains. “We have received some really good orders there. We also had a very good year in the environmental control business and generally we have done very well in service and maintenance. We have extended the amount of services, especially in the power and mining industry.”

His goal is to expand even further beyond South Africa’s borders. “Opportunities for business in future are huge in the African context. [There] is always a need for more power and there is potential for new mining projects, generating substantial demand for our products, especially

operating a corporate fleet is becoming anightmare, with constant regulatory changesand ever increasing operational costs. Whynot join our growing client base, who haverealised that a true fleet management partneris critical to the effective management of theirfleet requirements, regardless how small orlarge their business? Eqstra fleet Management (EfM) recognisesthat company vehicles are not core to yourbusiness and that they will at best be treatedas a necessary operational expense. To thiseffect we are the only fleet managementcompany in south Africa offering a total 360degree solution in-house – allowing ourclients to outsource part or all fleet relatedprocesses to EfM. Working with our clients, we have developedour solution on all fleet costs and not just thecost of the vehicle. our 29 years’ experiencein the south African market has allowed us todevelop a solution and capabilities to assistclients from vehicle choice and policy designright through to driver management – butmost importantly our market leading systemprovides clients with a platform to consolidateall fleet related costs into one single view oftheir fleet, thereby allowing us to benchmarkcost drivers and constantly identify andaddress areas of improvement. We are now in a position to report the totalcosts per individual vehicle per kilometerdriven, allowing us to work with our clients toconstantly measure and drive down all fleetrelated costs. This we believe is what a truefleet management partner should be able toprovide you – and the resultant savings, inmany cases exceeding 12% of total costs aretestament to our approach. Through our “Quest for Excellence”philosophy we constantly invest in ouremployee skills & our systems and in the lastyear alone we have spent more than R50mto ensure that we remain the fleet management company of choice. We are so confident in our solution thatwe will only work with a client if we canguarantee them measurable savings.

Eqstra Fleet Management

For more information or to get a free consultation on how EFM solutions can be tailor made to help you drive down your fleet costs by up to 15%, contact Eqstra Fleet Management on 011 458 7555 or visit www.efm.co.za

WE DON’T JUSTFINANCE YOUR VEHICLESWE MANAGE YOUR FLEET



capital equipment such as air and gas handling equipment, mine main ventilation and cooling.

“The SADC countries are emerging as an important market for us, especially in mining and infrastructure. We have developed a strong reputation in the region through a combination of excellent engineering solutions and innovation, and our geographical proximity facilitates rapid after-market support, at site where required.”

Opportunities are plenty at home too and Bärwald is optimistic about the future for Howden Africa, particularly in the light of the environmental regulations that are increasingly impacting the manufacturing sector.

“South Africa is focused on cleaning up environmentally and driving to green and we’re seeing new environmental laws and carbon tax proposals for the country, as well as the 2010 Clean Air Act. Companies are now required to manage and monitor emissions and invest in environmental control. We’ll see a lot of power producers looking to clean up their acts even more and bring the existing plants and new plants to international standards. Obviously a big slice of what we do is relevant here - our environmental control division is growing. We have good, proven products.

“We are optimistic about the future. We are supplying major turnkey ventilation projects and ice plants for the

Tektower manufactures a whole range of cooling towers from the smallest fibreglass units for air-conditioning applications to site assembled modular units for large manufacturing plants and mines to the concrete or galvanized steel units for the really large applications. All towers are manufactured to the exceptionally high quality standards. Tektower is one hundred percent south African owned and are proud of the fact that 95% of our cooling Tower products are produced in south Africa and our towers are built to last - they are designed and built to withstand the African harsh conditions - the sun, the heat and humidity.

Tektower

Tektower manufactures a whole range of cooling towers from the smallest fiberglass units for air-conditioning applications to site assembled modular units for large manufacturing plants and mines to the concrete or galvanized steel units for the really large applications. All towers are manufactured to the exceptionally high quality standards.exceptionally high quality standards.

Although Tektower is a specialised cooling tower company, it offers more than just cooling towers. We offer a whole range of products that are related to our business. These include:

· Water Circulating Pumps· Chillers· Plate heat exchangers· Side Stream Filters· Engineering designs and drawings· Project Management· Full Maintenance Contracts· Water Treatment

Head Office Contact Details

82 Plane RoadSpartan

P.O. Box 3990Edenvale

1610GautengGauteng

Tel: +27 (0)11 975-6506Fax: +27 (0)11 394-3458

Email: [email protected]: www.tektower.co.za

CLIENTS


ultra-deep gold mines and platinum and coal mines in South Africa and we currently have major contracts within the rest of Africa to supply ventilation equipment to deep level mines and process plants. Our main projects going on right now are the supply of air and gas handling equipment to the new large power projects at Eskom.”

The aftermarket is another growth area where many of Howden’s equipment is still in the field after 30 to 40 years operation that need servicing, refurbishments and upgrades.

Mr Bärwald has worked with Howden for over 23 years. Along the way he has worked and headed the Howden’s Australian and South East Asia business for 15 years and South American businesses for three years, and also headed the Chinese operations for nearly two years.

“Howden is a great place to work,” he says. “The company has a presence on every continent and an impressive track record of innovation. To carry that forward we invest in technological R&D, innovation, and the training of our staff.

“We have, at the moment, like many other engineering companies, a generation shift, a change. We have a lot of people that will retire in the next decade and now the next generation has to take over and we want to maintain good skills. We also ensure that if you are in Europe, North America, China, Australia or Africa you will get the same quality.”

Howden has long recognised the importance of allowing individuals to develop their skills and knowledge to their full potential.

In 2008 it added a formal dimension to its training capabilities by instituting the Howden Academy, a residential training course at the University of Caledonia in Glasgow in which engineers from all Howden business units are brought together for an introduction to technologies and business practices.


The company has a presence on every continent and an impressive track

record of innovation. To carry that forward we invest in technological R&D, innovation, and

the training of our staff

Industrial Cleaning62 George StreetMantevredeVanderbijlpark

Tel: 016 932 5328Fax: 016 932 5395Email: [email protected]: [email protected]

Hydraulics & Engineering36 Saturn Street

Naledi Vaalpark

Tel: 016 971 1218Fax: 016 971 3530

Email: [email protected]: [email protected]

Our services include: Hydraulics – New & reconditioned pumps, cylinders, seals, new valves, valve banks and hydraulic hoses and fittings.

Engineering – Machining, shafts, bushes, general engineering, repairs to gearboxes and valves.

Protective LiningsProtective Linings – Anti-corrosion, rubberlining and fibreglass.

Plastic Pipeline Systems – HDPE, PVC, PVDF & Polypropylene.

Industrial Cleaning – Vacuum, high-pressure water jetting.

ROCKENT INDUSTRIAL SERVICEScc

South Africa’s own Superior Hydro-Blasting, Vacuum Specialist, Hydraulics & Engineering

Fabcom CC, a well established and experienced company, specialises in the manufacture and supply of fabric and metal expansion joints, bellows and insulation products. Due to the many and varied applications of the product, clients requirements are individually assessed and their needs met. Fabcom prides itself upon the selection and utilisation of high performance, Fabcom prides itself upon the selection and utilisation of high performance, high quality material in the manufacturing of its products. A leader in its field and with access to state of the art materials, Fabcom is able to ensure that the end user receives cost effective and technical sound solutions. Applications• Fan Manufacturers• • Project Houses• Cement Industry• Pulp and Paper Industry• Petro-chemical Industry• Sugar Industry• Fertilizer Industry• Metallurgical Industry• • Power Generation• Pollution Control and Gas Cleaning

Tel: +27 11 708 7010Cell: +27 82 657 8882

Email: [email protected]: www.fabcomsa.co.za

A preferred supplier to many large corporations, offering specialized services and products to a broad spectrum of utilities

We strive to provide our clients with products and services that meet or exceed their expectations, both in terms of quality and service, while also ensuring competitive pricing.

We offer products and services across all Engineering Disciplines:

• Machining• Reconditioning • Specialized Welding • Manufacturing / Fabrication

We are proud to manufacture Howden’s fans, casings and rotors.

Krupp St. 8 P.O. Box 3054 Vanderbijlpark1900

Tel: (016) 986-2130/1/2/4Fax: (016) 986-2135

Email: [email protected]: www.aio.co.za

“Training is vital,” Bärwald says. “We have an engineering ladder structure with the aim of, if you are a good engineer, you can get the same kind of promotions as you would if you had manager career. Next year we intend to do even more training. We will continue to train.”

Bärwald says the Howden Academy builds on the cooperation and shared knowledge that has always distinguished Howden as a company. “Every Howden engineer is an integral part of an international pool of leading-edge expertise.” END

To learn more visit www.howden.com.

Zesco is Zambia’s state-owned power

utility. It generates, transmits, and

distributes electricity in the country

and offers various vending options for

customers to buy electricity units using

prepaid meters.

In recent years it has pumped

millions into infrastructure

improvements, playing its part in

securing Zambia’s future.

But still more could be done. Zambia

endures persistent power interruptions.

Zesco is determined to improve

the situation.

In order to raise funds for power

improvements, the company is looking

to foreign investors. Managers recently

visited London, Boston and New York in

order to meet with potential investors.

“We are probably talking $1 billion,

probably even $2 billion,” Cyprian

Chitundu, Managing Director of Zesco

revealed at the Zambian International

Investment Forum.

The utility may even decide to

issue a Eurobond, following in the

footsteps of the recent issuance of

$750 million debt by the Zambian

government in September.

What is clear is that Zesco is looking

to address power problems. Zambia has

experienced extensive power shortages

over recent years, leading to power

outages impacting strongly on the

economy as production has been halted

on a number of occasions due to lack of

power supplies.

Of particular note, the country’s

mining sector has suffered stoppages as

a result of low power supplies, causing

the country to miss out on the potential

it holds as the largest copper producer

in Africa.

In January 2013 it was revealed that

Zesco plans to build a new 330 kV power

transmission line to provide electricity to

new mines.

The environmental management

agency said Zesco applied for

environmental approval to build the

power line, which would feed First

Quantum Minerals’ Kalumbila mine and

Barrick Gold’s Lumwana mine.

“The estimated capital cost of the

project is $249.3-million and project

implementation will take about 30

months,” the agency said in a statement.

Zesco was formerly known as Zambia

Electricity Supply Corporation Limited

and changed its name in May 1994. The

company was founded in 1970 and is

based in Lusaka.

It has offices in Lusaka, Ndola, and

Kitwe; and service outlets in Zambia.

To learn more visit www.zesco.co.zm.


ZESCO/114/12-EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR THE IDENTIFICATION, VERIFICATION AND REVALUATION OF ZESCO ASSETS FOR USE IN ACCOUNTING AND INSURANCE PURPOSES

1 BACKGROUND ZESCO Limited invites Expression of Interest

from qualified services providers to identify, verify and revalue fixed assets for both accounting and insurance purposes to comply with International Accounting Standards and Insurance and Risk Management Standards. Bidders can access more information on ZESCO website: www.zesco.co.zm.

1.1 ZESCO INFRASTRUCTURE In the generation business, ZESCO has the following

power stations among others ranging from 108 MW to 990MW, four Small Hydro Power Stations ranging from 5 to 12 MW and Nine (09) Diesel Power Stations spread throughout the country. ZESCO has a network comprising Transmission Lines exceeding 7,231km and over 60 Transmission Substations spread across Zambia. The Distribution business has a installed capacity of over 1500MVA. Additionally, ZESCO has other moveable and non-moveable assets. ZESCO has a Business Information Management System, all business applications are based on Oracle data base.

2 SCOPE OF WORK The assignment involves identification, verification,

coding and revaluation of all fixed assets for the Company so as to come up with a comprehensive asset register reflecting fair values. Additionally, there will be need to establish an internationally accepted framework (PAS 55) for sustainable asset management. The assignment shall involve but not limited to the following activities:

2.1 Conduct a fixed asset identification and verification exercise; 2.2 Fixed assets data capture and upload in relevant databases; 2.3 Asset classification and categorization according to industry best practice.; 2.4 Establishing Asset

fair values (total reinstatement values) for use to prove insurable losses of fixed assets; 2.5 To establish an intelligent and internationally recognized coding system and tag all the identified and verified fixed assets for tracking purposes. 2.6 To determine fair values for all the company’s fixed assets in accordance with the internationally accepted practice for electricity utility industry (PAS 55), International Accounting and Insurance Standards; 2.7 Establish Satellite Asset Care Centers and a Central Asset Care Centre to anchor

assetmanagement; 2.8 Establish an Asset

Management Policy that should include but not limited to the standards, processes, procedures,

guidelines and controls for the recording of assets beginning at the budgeting and procurement stages through to the final disposal and or transfer of Assets.

3 QUALIFICATIONS Interested consultants should provide information

indicating that they are qualified to undertake the assignment by submitting their detailed information on the following:-

3.1 Ten Years demonstrable experience in undertaking similar assignments in Power Utility Companies. 3.2 Demonstrated experience and expertise in the valuation of Generation, Transmission and Distribution assets and other associated infrastructure of not less than ten years. 3.3 Demonstrated experience in Financial Audits and specifically verification and confirmation of Fixed assets and liabilities of not less than ten years. 3.4 Demonstrated experience in Insurance Loss Adjusting/Assessment in the Electricity Supply Iindustry of not less than ten years. 3.5

Provide evidence of membership to relevant professional bodies. 3.6 Provide evidence of sound financial capacity to carry out the assignment (Submit independently audited annual statements for the last five years).

The firm should show evidence of collaboration with any Oracle partner(Globally) whose credentials include the following:

(a) Valid Oracle Partner Id,(b) Partnership Validity(c) Status of Partner - Silver/ Gold/ Platinum/ Diamond.

(d) Certifications and References

4. SUBMISSION The Expression of Interest must be deposited in

the tender box on the 2nd Floor, New Building, ZESCO Limited, Head Office, Stand No. 6949, Great East Road, Lusaka, Zambia on or before Friday, 8 February 2013 at 10:30 hours local time. The telephone numbers are 260 (211) 223971 and 260 (211) 362314 and the telefax number is 260 (211) 223971.

HOWEVER, TELEFAX OFFERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

SENIOR MANAGER – PROCUREMENT

SA MAG 34 ZESCO - ZESCO DPS.indd 2 22/01/2013 15:01:13

Great East Road, stand no.6949P o Box 33304,Lusaka,Zambia

Tel:260-211-361111. fax:260-211-222753Email:[email protected] Website:www.zesco.co.zm

ZESCO/114/12-EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR THE IDENTIFICATION, VERIFICATION AND REVALUATION OF ZESCO ASSETS FOR USE IN ACCOUNTING AND INSURANCE PURPOSES

1 BACKGROUND ZESCO Limited invites Expression of Interest

from qualified services providers to identify, verify and revalue fixed assets for both accounting and insurance purposes to comply with International Accounting Standards and Insurance and Risk Management Standards. Bidders can access more information on ZESCO website: www.zesco.co.zm.

1.1 ZESCO INFRASTRUCTURE In the generation business, ZESCO has the following

power stations among others ranging from 108 MW to 990MW, four Small Hydro Power Stations ranging from 5 to 12 MW and Nine (09) Diesel Power Stations spread throughout the country. ZESCO has a network comprising Transmission Lines exceeding 7,231km and over 60 Transmission Substations spread across Zambia. The Distribution business has a installed capacity of over 1500MVA. Additionally, ZESCO has other moveable and non-moveable assets. ZESCO has a Business Information Management System, all business applications are based on Oracle data base.

2 SCOPE OF WORK The assignment involves identification, verification,

coding and revaluation of all fixed assets for the Company so as to come up with a comprehensive asset register reflecting fair values. Additionally, there will be need to establish an internationally accepted framework (PAS 55) for sustainable asset management. The assignment shall involve but not limited to the following activities:

2.1 Conduct a fixed asset identification and verification exercise; 2.2 Fixed assets data capture and upload in relevant databases; 2.3 Asset classification and categorization according to industry best practice.; 2.4 Establishing Asset

fair values (total reinstatement values) for use to prove insurable losses of fixed assets; 2.5 To establish an intelligent and internationally recognized coding system and tag all the identified and verified fixed assets for tracking purposes. 2.6 To determine fair values for all the company’s fixed assets in accordance with the internationally accepted practice for electricity utility industry (PAS 55), International Accounting and Insurance Standards; 2.7 Establish Satellite Asset Care Centers and a Central Asset Care Centre to anchor

assetmanagement; 2.8 Establish an Asset

Management Policy that should include but not limited to the standards, processes, procedures,

guidelines and controls for the recording of assets beginning at the budgeting and procurement stages through to the final disposal and or transfer of Assets.

3 QUALIFICATIONS Interested consultants should provide information

indicating that they are qualified to undertake the assignment by submitting their detailed information on the following:-

3.1 Ten Years demonstrable experience in undertaking similar assignments in Power Utility Companies. 3.2 Demonstrated experience and expertise in the valuation of Generation, Transmission and Distribution assets and other associated infrastructure of not less than ten years. 3.3 Demonstrated experience in Financial Audits and specifically verification and confirmation of Fixed assets and liabilities of not less than ten years. 3.4 Demonstrated experience in Insurance Loss Adjusting/Assessment in the Electricity Supply Iindustry of not less than ten years. 3.5

Provide evidence of membership to relevant professional bodies. 3.6 Provide evidence of sound financial capacity to carry out the assignment (Submit independently audited annual statements for the last five years).

The firm should show evidence of collaboration with any Oracle partner(Globally) whose credentials include the following:

(a) Valid Oracle Partner Id,(b) Partnership Validity(c) Status of Partner - Silver/ Gold/ Platinum/ Diamond.

(d) Certifications and References

4. SUBMISSION The Expression of Interest must be deposited in

the tender box on the 2nd Floor, New Building, ZESCO Limited, Head Office, Stand No. 6949, Great East Road, Lusaka, Zambia on or before Friday, 8 February 2013 at 10:30 hours local time. The telephone numbers are 260 (211) 223971 and 260 (211) 362314 and the telefax number is 260 (211) 223971.

HOWEVER, TELEFAX OFFERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

SENIOR MANAGER – PROCUREMENT

SA MAG 34 ZESCO - ZESCO DPS.indd 2 22/01/2013 15:01:13

Upping the ante: C O N T I N E N T A L R E I N S U R A N C E

C O N T I N U E S T O E x P A N D

Continental Reinsurance is the largest local reinsurance company in Nigeria. The pan-African reinsurer is headquartered in Lagos, operates in more than 35 African countries, and has expanded its regional footprint with offices in Cameroon, Kenya

and Cote D’Ivoire.

By Ian Armitage


P an-African reinsurer Continental Reinsurance

is ambitious. In the last 12 months the Nigerian reinsurance company has opened a new office in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, and converted its regional office in Nairobi to a full-fledged company having been granted a license to operate in Kenya.

“Continental Reinsurance has been doing business in Kenya since 2009, but the growing demand for reinsurance products saw us go to a fully-fledged company,” says CEO Femi Oyetunji. “It is an important market.”

That’s not the end of the African expansion. The company expects to have its office in Tunisia back up and running by the end of the quarter and will launch a Southern African operation some time soon.

So what’s the secret? “2012 was a good year,” Oyetunji explains. “We moved into new territories and we opened a new office in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, to strengthen our underwriting operations in Francophone West Africa. We also incorporated a subsidiary in Kenya in Nairobi – it is a fully licensed Kenyan office.

“We now have three branches outside Nigeria - Douala in Cameroon, Nairobi

and Abidjan - and we have plans to open more branches in the near future to improve service to clients.

“Things are looking good. We have a solid balance sheet and we’ve embedded enterprise risk management, which is really driving the business forward.“

Dr Oyetunji became CEO in January 2011 and has helped put Continental Re on a stronger footing.

“What we have put in place in Continental Re is strict enterprise management framework,” he says. “The company is a pan-African reinsurer, and what we want is to demonstrate our commitment to our market - Africa.

“We believe we have to keep African premium as much as possible within Africa. So, for us in Continental Reinsurance, our ambition, which is in line with our vision, is to truly become the premier pan-African reinsurer.”

It would seem the company is heading in the right direction.

“So far it has been positive,” Oyetunji says. In a first for Nigeria (and indeed Africa as a whole, South Africa excluded) Continental Reinsurance has signed the UN Environmental Programme Finance Initiative’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance, a principles-based global

continental reinsurance FocuS INSURANCE


We believe we have to

keep African premium as much

as possible within Africa. So, for us in Continental

Reinsurance, our ambition,

which is in line with our vision, is to

truly become the premier pan-African reinsurer

44 www.southafricamag.com44 www.southafricamag.com

framework to manage environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities in the insurance business.

According to Oyetunji it is a huge step in the “right direction” and means Continental Re is committed to integrating environmental, social and governance issues into its core business strategies and operations, and to implementing the principles across all fields of work.

“That is what we are doing,” he says. “As a reinsurer, we are in the business to protect people in the long-term. I am therefore very proud we’ve taken this route.”

It demonstrates Continental Re’s adoption of sustainable insurance aims, accountability, and transparency to the public in managing environmental, social and governance issues.

It provides a “solid platform for the future”.“As I said, we want to expand and to

do that well you have to act in an orderly manner,” Oyetunji says. “It is very important. Our plan is to strategically grow the business throughout the continent,

with energy and life insurance as two key growth opportunities.

“Our policy is to concentrate on Africa. We are expanding because we believe that reinsurance conducted at a pan-African scale is in the best position to offer clients stability, longevity, innovations and more tailored service that is more responsive to market conditions.

“We are already working in more than 35 countries in Africa with our three strategic offices, and more are planned. Africa is interesting to us in particular because it has one of the lowest insurance penetration rates in the world, excluding South Africa, and very fast growing economies. Africa in general is full of opportunities and we are targeting that.

“Our services are driven by our new corporate philosophy of sustainable trust.”

To help it articulate the pan-African strategy and to communicate the fact that it is a responsible reinsurer, Continental Re has enlisted the help of Gong Communications, a specialist brand agency.

First Re

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Oyetunji says the move has “assisted in branding across Africa” and that the task was such that “professionals were needed to communicate effectively and consistently across the continent”.

Does he expect a bright future?“I do,” Oyetunji stresses. “One important

thing is that we are committed to our shareholders and we are committed to rewarding them with dividend and good returns on their investments.

“We aim to project ourselves as a pan-African reinsurer as we focus on expanding our presence in line with our fi ve-year strategic plan. Our transformation isn’t complete. Before I became CEO, the business recapitalised, and we have focused on a ‘back to basics’ approach, looking to offer outstanding service, the right packages, and getting the fundamentals

right, while driving international best practice through the business in the shape of enterprise risk management.

“As we grow we will sustain what we have done and improve at various levels.

“We believe we can be the premier pan-African reinsurer, we have a good track record, working to international best practices.

“This is a transitional year for Continental Re when all the various initiatives of the past few years will come together.”

Continental Re fi rst began operations in 1987. It was listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2007 and is rated B+ (Good) by AM Best for fi nancial outlook, credited for robust risk-adjusted capital.

Its product mix includes a full range of treaty and facultative reinsurance services.

To learn more visit www.continental-re.com

Continental Reinsurance FOCUS INSURANCE


Intdev on hiring trail following strategic expansion

Following a series of acquisitions, Intdev Internet Technologies - a

business solutions specialist company

- is pushing to expand its offering and is looking to hire new staff.

By Ian Armitage

I ntdev Internet Technologies is an ambitious business solution, ISP and managed services specialist. Led by Christiaan Mienie, it has been on the

acquisition trail over the past couple of years, pushing to strengthen and expand its services to the South African and African marketplace.

“We have been working hard to expand our offering,” Mr Mienie says of the local business success story. “We’ve managed to stay one step ahead of the curve, despite the challenging economic environment.”

Mr Mienie became CEO of the firm in 2011 when Intdev merged with Liquid8, a support and software development company, to form one entity.

He says it now “provides a complete business solutions offering”.

Recent acquisitions include that of A & C Cosmic Solutions and MegaWeb Internet Solutions, both adding a “complimentary layer” of services to Intdev.

“We’re seeing the benefits already, particularly in support and service delivery,” says Mienie. “All of our acquisitions have been strategic and have extended our value offering, bringing on board additional skills and experience to enable us to grow our own business and offer services that differentiate us even more. It has been great for customers.”

Intdev Internet Technologies has services such as dedicated servers, virtual servers, 3G, hosted exchange, VoIP, e-commerce platforms and CRM (customer relationship management) systems, backed by an experienced 24/7 support team and bespoke software development skills.

It has strategic partnerships with vendors and service providers such as SugarCRM, Vodacom, MWeb, Microsoft, Internet Solutions, HP and Cisco.

“We’re growing fast and 2012 was another success year, building on what we achieved in 2011,” Mienie says. “Our growth is despite economic difficulties and the reason for

Intdev Internet Technologies FocuS TECHNOLOGY




it is that, as a balanced entity, we’ve adapted ourselves in a way that enables us to absorb all of the changes coming through. We’ve acquired complimentary services, bolstered and even expanded our offering. The result is that we’ve brought in new customers and offered our existing customers even greater value.

“Why are we attracting new business? Well, we offer combined strengths, expertise and skills that in turn provide a complete business solution to companies in SA and in Africa.

“We also work very hard on customer retention. Delivering a world class service that means people come back time and again.”

It is no surprise that Intdev, established in 1998, is one of South Africa’s foremost providers of sophisticated and customised services.

It focuses on meeting the connectivity, communications and managed services needs of SMEs and is able to offer tailored, industry- and business-specific solutions to suit particular challenges or requirements.

intdev offices

MWEB Business has ploughed an enormous sum of money into developing the sophisticated connectivity and communications infrastructure south African businesses of all sizes need to compete in today’s global economy.

“But we recognise that we cannot reach every business in the country on our own,” says Andre Joubert, GM at MWEB Business.

“We therefore partner with smart, efficient and innovative second tier isPs like intdev, to reach as broad a market as possible.”

MWEB Business provides this select group of isPs with a wide range of products - Uncapped ADsL, Bonded ADsL, Hosted Exchange and Hosted server offerings – on a wholesale basis.

MWEB’s wholesale partners then package these services in a way that best suits their customer base.”it’s a win-win-win situation for all parties: MWEB Business, our partners and their customers,” Joubert concludes.

MWEB Business - more than an ISP

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“We pride ourselves in providing quality web hosting services on self-owned servers, enabling our clients to establish a successful, reliable presence on the Internet,” Mienie says. “Our high standards of service and support is what sets us apart in a cluttered market, and has earned us the trust of several big players in South Africa and it’s neighbouring countries.

“Although our strength lies in providing fully customisable Internet and communications solutions, we have also extended our services to email, 3G, broadband, CMS and CRM, amongst others.

“We are a true one-stop shop and offer a personalised service to all existing and potential clients, by taking their specific needs into account.”

And things show no sign of slowing down.

“Our workforce has doubled in the last six months and we’ve got another 15 percent increase in workforce that is starting on February 1,” Mienie explains. “We have expanded into other areas. We have opened an office in the Limpopo region, we’re expanding into Angola, and we’re in Zambia, so our expansion is something that we’re really driving but at the same time keeping overheads at a low cost and planning for what the future holds.

“Looking forward, there are lots of opportunities for us at home and abroad. Africa has never been a great platform for connectivity and data throughput and what we’ve done is created infrastructures where we can provide those countries with their interconnectivity. That is very fulfilling.”

The intdev internet

Technologies team: (from left to right)

Reception, kenny Mackenzie

- operations manager, Andre

stander - cso and christiaan

Mienie - cEo

server room


Huge growth is expected in Zambia.“We have adapted something for them

(Zambia) and getting connectivity from Zambia into Africa through our expansion model. So, that’s the next step for 2013 to get that whole infrastructure up and running,” Mienie says. “We’ve started our preliminary testing and our forecast is to get better interconnectivity and a more reliable internet service than they currently experience.

“But opportunities really are all over the place and we just upgraded our data centre to increase our capacity to offer a true IT outsource solution for the customer. It’s been a major drive for us to get our internet provision and services that we offer in the online sector to a better level than it currently is in the country.”

In terms of tech trends for 2013, Mienie expects more cloud computing, in-memory computing, strategic big data, and increasing support for mobile devices (as we continue to ditch the traditional PCs).

“Those are all things we’re seeing and we’re positioned for that. We are certainly virtualising the office and customers are moving away from having a server in their offices to more cloud-based offerings. We’ve broken that realm really. We are very successful in having the office specialised and sitting online.

“Why would you want to have a virtual office and having your data stored elsewhere? I think the reality is that it is cost effective. It is a lot more secure. And it doesn’t ever go offline. For the bigger corporates they’ve done this, as a strategic move. For the smaller SMEs, it is a slow move. But we are seeing a trend of people actually moving into a virtual office space.”

Expect to see more of Intdev later in the year. END

Visit www.intdev.co.za.


server room

We are certainly virtualising the office and customers are moving away from

having a server in their offices to more cloud-

based offerings


Abax Investments is an owner-managed company that focuses exclusively on investment management. South Africa Magazine talks to Anthony Sedgwick, one of the firm’s founding members, about its history, investment approach and the booming retail space.

By Ian Armitage

InvestingI N 2 0 1 3

A s an investor you’ll naturally wonder ‘are my savings and

investments working as hard as they could?’

The start of a new year is always a good time to evaluate your portfolios and make any changes you think necessary, but with so many available options where do you start?

Noone can know for certain what future investment returns will be, and in 2012 there were many winners and losers.

As far as winners goes, it was those who opted to invest in retail, in pan-African supermarket chains in particular, and also banks and insurance companies or products.

As one analyst told South Africa Magazine Africa is “currently under-banked” adding that “investors who find it tough to decide whether growth or value will dominate in 2013 may find asset allocation funds the way to go.”

2012 was a miserable year to be invested in South African-listed mining stocks, the gold industry in particular.

The JSE’s best performing ‘gold sector’ stock was DRDGold – and they stopped mining gold in favour of retreating tailings, or dumps.

It grew 43 percent in value during 2012.

Of gold miners proper, Gold Fields was the best performer losing only 16.5 percent.

It seems resources weren’t the way to go.

Indeed, Robert Scharar, fund manager at the Commonwealth Africa Fund, recently told CNBC that investors who view Africa solely as a natural resources are “missing the picture”.

“There are great opportunities because of an emerging middle class, an increase in education and more transparent governments,” he said.

Scharar was positive about Africa and South Africa’s investment potential despite the outbreak of violence, which saw 44 killed at a Lonmin mine in August, and deteriorating labor relations across the country.

Abax Investments is a specialist South African investment manager.

According to Anthony Sedgwick, the business, which he has helped build, has “particular expertise in active share selection” and ensures “investment focus” by remaining small, to the extent that new business is capped to a degree - a business that isn’t growing stagnates, he admits - and client relationships are the “number one priority”.

Mr Sedgwick and two colleagues, Tim Allsop and Marius van Rooyen, founded Abax in 2003.

At the firm’s inception, it had three clients and three portfolio managers with R2 billion assets under management.

“We came from a big institutional fund management background,” Sedgwick says. “We learnt a lot through that process but we felt that a smaller, more nimble organisation, less mired in administrative red tape and complicated processes, had a much better chance of succeeding than the kind that we had worked in historically. That’s not to say that they are wrong and we’re right, but we felt that our way of doing things is a bit closer to what is going on, day-to-day.”

That focus remains. “Although we have

now grown to a size of approximately 50 clients, seven fund managers, two investment analysts and R60 billion funds under management, we still consider ourselves relatively small and nimble in comparison to our much larger competitors. It is a very jealously guarded principle of the organisation, but, in business, it’s a difficult thing to manage. You don’t want to become a victim of your own success, yet at the same time you don’t want to become a completely unambitious organisation that is intent on hiding behind big brick walls.

Abax Investments FocuS FUND MANAGEMENT




It’s something that we’re intensely aware of and manage on an ongoing basis. We also believe that if an organisation isn’t growing and going forward as a business then it is stagnating. That said, we’re very protective of the kind of organisation that we are, and we work very hard to remain true to our founding principles - to be a small focused team of experienced fund managers whose interests are completely aligned with those of its clients with a manageable number of client relationships and basically trying to put the team in the best position to generate future performance.

“Historic performance is one thing. We’re completely fixated on delivering future performance, that’s all we really care about. We have to create an environment that gives our investment team the best chance to succeed.”

Active managers like Abax are currently doing well and returns are coming in.

Abax took a fundamental strategic decision at the outset that they would outsource all non-core support activities to specialist professionals in order to focus on investment management and servicing their clients. Maitland have been their administrative partners since the firm’s inception and this partnership has enabled them to achieve solid growth and expand the range of mandates and their investing activities without disruption of this focus. The model has assisted Abax to secure large local and international institutional investors for whom independent professional administration is increasingly a governance standard. Maitland have over Us$145 billion of assets under administration. We offer a seamless solution through the front to back office across the full range of funds from traditional to alternative utilising leading technology solutions such as sunGard and Advent. for more information on Maitland and our funds offering visit www.maitlandgroup.com

Maitland


The industry is very healthy.Glenn Silverman, CIO of

Investment Solutions, recently told ABN that South African fund managers were “in good shape, brimming with ideas and new products”, explaining that “the boom market over the last decade has helped.”

He said the number of players operating in this space has increased. But there was still “massive growth”.

Retail in particular is “getting significant inflows”, he said.

“There are many different models, but the man in the street has a lot of money and is investing it,” Silverman explained.

Abax offers investment vehicles in the retail space through it’s long-standing partnership with Nedgroup Investments and direct client relationships in the institutional savings space.

More recently, it has ventured into multi-asset class offerings.

Within the absolute return space, Abax offers various hedge funds.

“We compete with large South African institutions but we have the benefit in that, as a relatively smaller firm, we are more nimble and we can access a deeper universe of investment opportunity,” Sedgwick says. “We work very hard to try and exploit that relative benefit. We don’t necessarily have to take very long-term, views in our portfolio positioning, although our general approach is as long-term investors looking to build a core portfolio of companies that we think are long-term winners and that offer reasonable value. At the margin we also look to add value in the short-

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term by taking advantage of shorter term market aberrations where there is particular volatility in a stock.”

Despite the local economy “chugging along” Abax continues to grow.

“The South African economy is growing slowly and we expect that to continue,” says Sedgwick. “It is hamstrung by a variety of constraints and consequently is not creating any employment, which it desperately needs to do. There are some reasonable opportunities for growth but one has to be very selective and within our market there is massive diversity of investment opportunity from banks to infrastructure development, retailers to mining. Some are exploiting growth opportunities in Africa. It is about picking the right stock, which is what we work hard to do.

“Our research processes are based around trying to forecast what the level of profitability for the companies in our investment universe is going to do and we

work tremendously hard every day to try and get that right. Our business is about generating investment performance, without that you don’t have an investment business, so we look to do that as consistently as possible. We encourage clients to look at the medium- to long-term track record because we can, and have in the past - and no doubt will in the future - get it wrong. But hopefully for relatively short periods.”

Abax’s strength is that it has a “strong” investment team in terms of industry and share-selection experience.

“We have managed to build wonderful loyalty with the clients we have and are attracting a lot of interest,” says Sedgwick. “Some clients have been with us since the firm’s inception. We look to build relationships with clients but we realise that in our industry it is about the clients’ confidence in your ability to deliver investment performance and I know that we

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PAS SA Magazine options.indd 3 1/15/13 3:04:30 PM

have one of the best, if not the best, investment teams in the country.

“Historically we only managed domestic equity portfolios but in 2011 we started managing balanced portfolios, which includes fixed interest assets,” he continues. “We had a very competent young man join our team and he has been with us about a year now and we see that as an interesting space. We believe that we have a great offering and can take substantial assets, which doesn’t compromise our capacity in the equity space at all. Our investment decisions can be translated quickly and efficiently through to the investment portfolios. There are no time lags between identification of investment opportunities and implementation.”

One challenge facing the industry is regulation.

“While we recognise the need for effective regulation, governance and oversight of the financial services industry, this needs to be balanced with the pragmatism of effective business to minimise unnecessary red tape that adds no value, investor protection or benefit,” Sedgwick concludes. “As the power of regulators and compliance officials has risen in recent years this balance has unfortunately moved too far into the realm of officious interference which also unnecessarily burdens business with extra costs and effectively builds higher barriers to entry for small business to the industry.”

What the future will hold for fund managers is unclear. END

To learn more about Abax visit www.abax.co.za



PROPERTy MARkET

RECOvERy

E x C I T E S S A B L E

Sable Holdings’ managing director Gavin Bowes talks

to South Africa Magazine.

By Ian Armitage

P roperty investment company Sable Holdings has interests in various property related activities.

Its portfolio comprises property investments and developments in the retail, industrial, residential and commercial sectors in Gauteng and Cape Town.

The Alt-X listed firm has a market capitalisation of R211.0 million.

“What sort of year was 2012? Well, we enjoyed a fruitful year in which growth projects within our existing portfolio were exploited and we streamlined some of the deadwood,” says managing director Gavin Bowes. “Indeed, it was certainly one of the better years in terms of the recession we have been going through from 2007 to 2011.”

The residential market has picked up, he says, encouraged by the fact that several banks have eased up on their lending criteria.

“I think the worst of the recession is probably behind us,” explains Bowes. “On the residential side, banks have started to make funds available. That has improved our sales and our project rollouts.

“We enter 2013 with optimism.”So what’s on the agenda? For one,

Sable has commenced, along with fellow shareholder Abland, one of the leading property developers in South Africa, the 35,000m² upmarket commercial park development known as Hertford Office Park, located in Midrand.

Development costs to date amount to R80.0 million.

“That’s a major project,” Bowes admits. “We’ve lots else planned such as several retail investments. In Midrand we’ll develop a retail shopping centre together with our long-standing business partners. It is an 8,500m² convenience shopping centre with national anchors and franchisee retailers. To date letters of intent have been signed with Pick ’n Pay and Food Lovers Market, which will account for 52 percent of the gross lettable area. Further interest has been

Sable Holdings FocuS PROPERTY




shown by national line shops, which will complement the strong tenant offering. The centre will be ready in November 2013.

“We also have various phases of retirement, residential and commercial developments happening in Pretoria. A 30 residential cluster development is also being built in Bryanston. The development is a R45 million project and has sold out in just five weeks, proving our pricing on this one was spot on and the product we have developed is exactly what the market wants. The price range per unit of R1.6 million up to R2.5 million is affordable, desirable and it appeals to younger buyers and professionals. We’ll look to roll that successful formula out and are seeking well located land in the Northern suburbs. It is a well thought out residential model for the future.”

Since the property market hit rock bottom five years ago, things appear to be picking up.

Commercial office leasing still remains challenging with rental rates remaining static, as most property owners endeavour to re-sign leases at competitive rental rates.

We’ve lots else planned such as several retail

investments. In Midrand we’ll develop a retail

shopping centre together with our long-standing business partners. It is

an 8,500m² convenience shopping centre with national anchors and

franchisee retailers. To date letters of intent have

been signed with Pick ’n Pay and Food Lovers

Market, which will account for 52 percent of the

gross lettable area. The centre will be ready in

November 2013

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“I think if one prices aggressively, you are in with a good chance of securing good tenants in commercial office space,” Bowes says. “But there is a lot of choice in that segment, particularly in the office market. A lot of A Grade tenants are happy to downgrade to B Grade premises where they save 30 percent on rentals and you are fighting that market, which has certainly opened up in parts of the northern suburbs. One has to price fairly, provide a good service to tenants, for which we have got a good reputation in the market.

“It is not easy. You have to be pragmatic about how many developments you are going to do every year. But we are in for the long haul and we are patient.”

One significant change in store for 2013 is that Sable is expected to delist from the Alt-X.

“We have announced our intention to delist,” says Bowes. “The valuation and independent fairness opinion process is detailed, complex, and ongoing.”

So why delist?“The primary reason is cost,” says Bowes. “With

us being reasonably small, and having already moved off the primary listing to the Alt-X, it is the next step in a process of cutting cost and simplifying our business strategies. We are caught up in a lot of governance issues being on the listed stock exchange and it is becoming more and more onerous each year, more and more challenging – social committees, environmental committees etc.”

Things are certainly looking up for Sable, a company worth keeping an eye on. END

Visit www.sableholdings.co.za.

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Johannesburg has over three million inhabitants, many without access to basic services. Providing affordable, low-cost housing is a major challenge. South Africa Magazine talks Joshco’s CEO Rory Gallocher about how to tackle the problem while

giving Joburg’s tired old buildings a new lease of life.

By Ian Armitage

P R O V I D I N G

affordable, safe and clean

H O U S I N G I N J O B U R G

A ccess to adequate housing is a constitutional right and the Government has built over three million subsidised housing units

since 1994.However, the backlog remains difficult

to eradicate.Although consistent and reliable statistics

on housing are hard to come by, current estimates suggest as many as 12 million people across South Africa are still without adequate housing.

The Department of Human Settlements has recognised that things aren’t happening quite fast enough and has committed to increasing the rate of delivery with a view to wiping out the current housing backlog by 2030.

It’s ambitious.At current levels, Government earmarks

over R16 billion for housing each year.But this may not be enough.Human settlements minister Tokyo

Sexwale recently claimed that, “We need all hands on deck to sort this problem out and to create a better South Africa for all.”

In the last year Johannesburg Social Housing Company has not only provided affordable housing, it has given Joburg’s tired old buildings a much-needed facelift.

Completed projects include ‘hostels to homes’ in Orlando, Antea Village and Klipspruitand Klipspruit in Soweto.

“Proper housing is a fundamental building block not only to human decency in terms of living conditions, but also in terms of stability,” says Joshco’s CEO Rory Gallocher. “We are addressing a need for affordable, safe and clean housing in the inner city and nearby suburbs. We’re a council-owned body run by an independent board, and are both a developer and a rental agent. We acquire and convert buildings ranging from residential houses to multi-storey apartment blocks and entire housing estates, and then offer them to residents at monthly rates that start at under R1000

Joshco FocuS PROPERTY




The Motheo construction Group was established in 1997 by Dr Thandi ndlovu and has during its sixteen year history developed into one of the largest BEE construction companies in south Africa. The Group’s activities range from Housing Development and construction, General contracting (Building and civils), Property Development, Material supply and Project Management.

one area of focus has been the development and construction of rental accommodation. This has been carried out in the major centres of Johannesburg, Germiston, Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Polokwane. We have cumulatively built 4,700 units with a combined value of R756 million.

concentrating on the Johannesburg area, we have assisted the Johannesburg social Housing company (JosHco) in the creation of 700 rental opportunities through their projects at Roodepoort inner city and Antea.

We have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship that has existed over the last five to six years. it is our sincere belief that we have afforded them a quality product at a competitive cost.

We hope to continue working constructively with them, as they fulfill their mandate to provide affordable rental accommodation across the face of Johannesburg.

Motheo Construction Group

and go up depending on the sizes and facilities available.”

Joshco was established in 2004 in response to the growing demand for affordable, quality and sustainable housing in the city.

Today it has 7,500 units spread across its 22 projects in the city and greater Johannesburg. About 25,000 tenants now have a roof over their heads.

In 2010 Joshco won the UN Scroll of Honour, a prestigious award for work done in the field of human settlements.

It is working towards a goal of 15,000 units.

“When we last spoke in 2010, I told you guys

about a very exciting development called AA House in Wanderers Street on the northern edge of the Johannesburg CBD. We hadn’t completed the project at that stage but it reached final completion at the end of November 2012 and the first families began moving in that month. The building was restored to the tune of R40 million and now, in January 2013, the property is almost full - there are only a couple of units that haven’t yet been signed up. It has proved to be a very successful development. The contractor we awarded the work to for that was a well-known company, Stefanutti Stocks. We’re pretty excited because


this building was one of those famously disastrous buildings in the inner city that had been illegally hijacked and it had been illegally occupied. It was in a terrible state and quite dangerous conditions.

“We’ve also recently completed a further 56 units in an area called Industrial West. That was a conversion from what used to be a hostel into family units. That is 100 percent complete.

“We’re also nearing completion of another conversion in the inner city, again a former hostel, called Selby Village. It has reached the advanced stage. The first batch of units is due for completion by March.”

Joscho has been doing a lot of infrastructure work, Gallocher says.

“We are doing a lot of investment in that respect, mainly in three areas. One is the inner city of Randburg where we are gearing up to do a 650 unit development, very high density development of 160 units per hectare, which is helping to revive the inner city. We have put a lot of investment into infrastructure - roads, electricity, water and sanitation. There were two other similar infrastructure investments: one in Soweto and the other was in City Deep for the final phase of the City Deep development, quite close to the container depot. It is the busiest port in the country, even though it isn’t a seaport, and that’s how a lot of goods are moved in and out of Joburg. The last one which I haven’t mentioned was that we completed Linatex building in New Doornfontein, east of the CBD, an emergency shelter with 160 beds.

“Am I proud of what Joshco has achieved? Well, yes, the external

We’ve also recently completed a further 56 units

in an area called Industrial West. That was a conversion

from what used to be a hostel into family units. That is 100 percent complete



evaluators are pleased and if they’re pleased with our performance then we’re pleased - it seems to be hitting the mark, so that’s a good thing. Also, the work that we do has a positive impact by supporting small business and supporting previously disadvantaged individuals and emerging small businesses. If you look at our total expenditure in the last financial year, 81 percent of that went to the benefit of small and emerging businesses and previously disadvantaged individuals. That’s a good indicator. The other very good indicator is the number of jobs that we created. Not jobs we created inside Joshco, I’m talking about the jobs created in the wider community and of the positive effects things like our job pathway programme has had. There are a number of people we put through our job pathways programme who were previously unemployed and secured employment by working on our construction sites or providing cleaning services on the completed sites. Last year alone, we created 2,003 jobs. So investing in affordable rental

housing doesn’t only benefit the tenant but has also positive effects in the economy generally around Joburg.”

Several new projects are just the beginning.

“There’s a lot lined up. For instance, I’ve just signed off a new tender for the final phase of Orlando and we have awarded that development to a contractor called the Motheo Construction Group.

“We’re investing in a range of different projects either in the form of planning and design, in the form of further infrastructure upgrade or the form of top structures. The total unit yield, excluding the infrastructure investment for the current financial year, is not a massive number of units. It’s 325. The reason why it isn’t so high is that so much of the money is going into infrastructure for future developments.”

Social housing presents its own challenges but Joshco is determined to make a difference. END

To learn more visit www.joshco.co.za.


We look at one of South Africa’s leading engineering companies Bigen Africa.

By Marie Toms

Bigen reports exciting prospects

Bahrain World Trade centre, Manama,

Bahrain (Bigen Africa acted as sub-

consultants to Ws Atkins Middle East)

images: ©Bigen Africa

oliver Tambo international Pier

Project; Gauteng, south Africa

T imes in the construction industry have been tough of late and the sector has struggled since the 2010 Soccer World Cup because

of a lack of reliable projects in South Africa. It forced people to look elsewhere and

improvements in the global economy saw local companies undertake projects overseas.

Some have even set up new offices in West and East Africa and other emerging markets.

And things are now improving at home; the state has started providing tenders for its multibillion-rand infrastructure plan.

Many analysts are now predicting an uptick. But you’ll have to wait a little bit longer – until 2014, say some.

And infrastructure projects could still be held back by bureaucracy.

“Even though we are building a pipeline, many construction companies believe our sector could be much busier. Waiting periods are volatile for projects in South Africa, which makes planning difficult and doing business more expensive,” Stefanutti Stocks CEO Willie Meyburgh said recently.

While we wait for construction to pick up at home, opportunities are plenty across Africa.

Bigen Africa FocuS CONSTRUCTION


At Bigen Africa, we think smarter

about infrastructure development – and our solutions span the entire

life-cycle of projects

Worcester Mall, Worcester,

Western cape, south Africa



Bigen Africa, a South African infrastructure development firm with a fast-growing presence in Africa, is eager to capitalise on that and is set on “accelerating infrastructure development” across the continent.

The firm has a network of 14 offices across South Africa and is represented in various African countries.

The group’s remarkable growth since its establishment in 1971 is, says its website, “indicative of our smarter business approach – interlocking worldclass, best-practice development finance, engineering, and management consulting expertise to customise innovative, value-driven solutions for clients in the public and private sectors alike”.

“At Bigen Africa, we think smarter about infrastructure development – and our solutions span the entire life-cycle of projects,” it adds.

Roodeplaat Bulk Water supply scheme ,

Tshwane, south Africa


BES Africa Engineering & Management Consult Pty Ltd formerly trading as Batseta Engineering Services is an Engineering Consultancy registered in South Africa in 2010. As part of the Construction Codes of Good Practice, gazetted on 4 May 2009 which seeks to deal with past inequalities, Bigen committed itself to enhance sustainable growth of micro, medium and small Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) companies through their enterprise development programme. Accordingly BES Africa Engineering & Management Consult became a beneficiary of this programme.

BES Africa Engineering & Management Consult is 100% black owned, with a level 1 BBBEE status. Services rendered include amongst others;

• Project and Programme Management• Infrastructure Development Planning • Construction Management • Electro-Mechanical Engineering• Water and Sanitation• Roads and Stormwater• Transportation Engineering• Structural Engineering

BES AFRICA

Unit E101 Jacaranda PlaceWoodmead Business Park145 Western Services RoadWoodmead

BES Africa Engineering & Management Consult is a specialized multi-disciplinary engineering company which provides technical and professional expertise within infrastructure, development and planning.

Our in-house engineering team is structured to identity and perform in Our in-house engineering team is structured to identity and perform in these specialized areas to client’s requirements and specifications, with the ability to project manage, engineer and deliver beyond the customer’s expectations. In conjunction with our associates that provide high quality service in our areas of expertise we offer engineering services on a turnkey basis.

Products & Services:

• Civil Construction Engineering• Civil Engineering Consulting Services• Electrical Engineering• Engineering Consulting Services• Environmental and Geophysical Engineering

Tel: +27 11 656 4309Fax: +27 11 656 4319

Email: [email protected]: www.besafrica.co.za

ENGINEERING- & CONSULTING SURVEYORS

REGISTERED SURVEYORS, SPECIALISING IN INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

SERVICES:

• Engineering surveys and mapping for design purposes• Construction setting out and verification• Establishment and verification of control beacon networks• As-built surveying, mapping and modelling for audit and verification purposes• Placement of registered surveyors on site – long and short term projects•• Hydrographic- and sedimentation surveys, mapping and modelling – dams and rivers• High definition terrestrial 3D laser scanning and modelling• High definition mobile 3D laser scanning and modelling

Offices in Gauteng, Limpopo, Northern Cape and Gaborone

We work in the whole of

Head office: + 27 12 347 7879E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.trailsurveys.com


Bigen is passionate about furthering growth in African countries and understands the unique challenges faced by them.

It is the company’s vision to develop sustainable infrastructure to improve the quality of life of the communities where it works.

According to Bigen’s website, it structures “integrated and sustainable development partnerships which give our clients the advantage of, not only tailored infrastructure on-site, but sustainable projects in the context of their broader socio-economic environment”.

It adds that its comprehensive range of professional services “assists our clients to remain profitable enterprises, while contributing positively to development, both locally and throughout Africa.”

“Bigen Africa, a multidisciplinary infrastructure consultancy providing services from project development through feasibility studies, implementation and asset management, uses its business approach to assist clients in achieving integrated

and sustainable development of their infrastructural requirements,” the company told a South Africa Magazine researcher.

Bigen recently released the group’s first integrated annual report, for the financial year ended October 2012. It provides an overview of sustainable achievements in market penetration, operational efficiencies, financial prudence and social economic development. Some highlights included the establishment of a new International Finance division; strengthening of the brand in Southern Africa and positioning in West Africa; deeper involvement in the South African government’s strategic infrastructure programmes; forging of new partnerships in both private and public sectors across the continent; achieving a 0.96 performance factor on strategic targets; and boosting of revenue by five percent.

In all it was a good year.“The company’s objective of “doing good

while doing business” was also taken to the

Roodeplaat Water Works (ozone Tank),

Tshwane, south Africa


At K2M Environmental we believe that the company vision should be enshrined in our day-to-day activities through a set of core values and our vision is to build sustainable partnerships with our clients by offering best practice, cost effective and appropriate solutions through the integration of development and planning, information technology and information management skills.

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Range of products and services:

· Policy and Strategy Research and Development· · Municipal Information Systems, Information Bureau Services and

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Cell: 082 7760 881 Email: [email protected]

next level with the establishment of the Intuthuko Foundation, an independent vehicle for channelling investments from strategic partners into underprivileged communities in areas of operation across the full value chain of business,” the company said.

Bigen said its growth strategy has “resulted in a sustainable pipeline of work and the company structure and workforce have been adjusted to accommodate growth”.

So, what’s next for Bigen? It has a healthy project pipeline and energy and engineering have been identified as growing divisions.

Indeed, the company has big plans for its involvement in the renewable energy sector, as well as promoting the wider array of services that can be provided.

“Bigen has pledged its full support for African governments in delivering their infrastructure development programmes as the company continues to expand its wings in West Africa and East Africa,” the company’s website says.

“In South Africa, Bigen Africa continues to work with national, provincial and local government in various sectors such as energy, water and sanitation, roads and transport, mining, housing, education, and health in the light of the government’s recent announcement on its infrastructure development programme”.

Bigen’s capabilities in engineering, management consulting and development finance are well embedded in Southern Africa. END

To learn more visit www.bigenafrica.com.


nelspruit Water Works,

Mpumalanga, south Africa

Highly recommended events through to April 2013

soUTH AfRicAinvestment in African Mining (inDABA)Cape Town International Convention Centre Coen Steytler AvenueCape Town 8000South Africa 4 – 7 February 2013www.miningindaba.com

investing in Africa 2013Gordon Institute of Business Science26 Melville RoadIllovo, JohannesburgSouth Africa19 – 20 February 2013www.gibs.co.za

7th Africa Economic forumSandton Convention Centre161 Maude Street Sandown 2196JohannesburgSouth AfricaMarch 8, 2013www.saconvention.co.za

Money Expo 2013Sandton Convention Centre161 Maude Street Sandown 2196JohannesburgSouth Africa7-9 March 2013www.moneyexpo.co.za

Retail World Africa 2013Sandton Convention Centre161 Maude Street Sandown 2196JohannesburgSouth Africa11-13 March 2013www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/ retail-world-africa

Propak Africa 2013Expo CentreCnr Nasrec & Rand ShowJohannesburg 200012-15 March 2013www.propakafrica.co.za

ARA Week 2013Westin Grand HotelConvention Square Lower Long Street Cape TownSouth Africa18-22 March 2013www.citac.com/index.php/archive/items/ARA-week-2013-announcement.html

WoodEx for AfricaGallagher Convention Centre 19 Richard DriveMidrandJohannesburg 1685South Africa21-23 March 2013www.woodexforafrica.com

LAMiPisA 2013 - Leadership and

Management in Projectified industry

south AfricaCape Peninsula University of Technology,Cape TownSouth Africa1-4 April 2013www.cput.ac.za/lamipisa-2013

BioEnergy World AfricaSandton Convention Centre161 Maude Street Sandown 2196JohannesburgSouth Africa8-11 April 2013www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/power-electricity-world-africa/bioenergy.stm

source Africa: The African Textile,

Apparel and footwear Trade EventCape Town International Convention Centre Coen Steytler AvenueCape Town 8000South Africa 9-11 April 2013www.sourceafrica.co.za

AfRicAoil and Gas infrastructure security

Africa 2013Alisa Hotel21 Dr Isert RoadNorth RidgeAccraGhana21 – 24 January 2013www.oilandgas-security.com

The nigeria oil and Gas conference

international conference centreAbujaNigeria18-21 February 2013www.cwcnog.com

Buildint TanzaniaDiamond Jubilee Hall Exhibition CentreMalik RoadUpanga WestDar-Es-SalaamTanzania22-24 February 2013www.growexh.com/BUILDINTANZANIA/index.html

offshore West AfricaInternational Conference CentreCastle RoadAccraGhana19 - 21 March 2013www.offshorewestafrica.com

cAPE V, 5th African Petroleum congress

& ExhibitionLe Méridien Re-NdamaPO Box 4064 Libreville Gabon26 - 28 Mar 2013www.biztradeshows.com/trade-events/african-petroleum-congress-exhibition.html


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Documents

South Africa Magazine Issue 34