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Manufacturing
Mpumalanga has a diverse manufacturing sector. The Lowveld area supports food and beverage enterprises and timber processing. Approximately 70% of jobs in the manufacturing sector are in food and forestry.
Standerton has textile-manufacturing capacity in the form of Standerton Mills. It is also home to several plants that use local raw materials: Nestlé has an infant-cereal manufacturing plant, RCL runs farms in the Carolina district and Early Bird is prominent. McCain and PepsiCo (Simba) have plants that use the province’s plentiful potato crop.
TSB Sugar runs two large mills and produces fruit juices through a subsidiary company. Nelspruit is the centre of the province’s foodprocessing cluster.
The presence of Ferrometals (a Samancor company) in Emalahleni means that Mpumalanga is an important place for metals and machinery manufacturing. It produces charge chrome and is one of the largest ferrochome plants in the world. Joint ventures such as Crometals (Pty) Ltd, Poschrome (Pty) Ltd and Elkem Ferroveld operate from the site.
Most manufacturing in the province takes place in the Highveld where there is access to chrome, steel and coal.
In the course of an upgrade, FLSmidth has also doubled the size of its
SECTOR INSIGHT
FLSmidth has doubled the size of its Delmas facility.
Delmas Supercentre to 10 500m². The company makes equipment for materials handling and mineral processing. The centre also hosts a training facility and handles repairs for customers.
In Middelburg, Thos Begbie makes a variety of products at its heavy engineering works. Graphite Freezeline Solutions opened a new graphite facility within the Begbie property in 2018.
Thos Begbie has announced an expansion into Zambia, where it will service and repair furnace components.
Middelburg-based Columbus Stainless is a major supplier of stainless-steel products to the domestic and international market. About 25% of the company’s production is sold domestically.
The Manganese Metal Company in Nelspruit is the largest producer of pure electrolytic manganese metal in the world. Delta EMD, in the same town, is one of the biggest producers of electrolytic manganese dioxide, a material used in the manufacture of alkaline batteries.
The chemicals and liquid fluids complex of Sasol at Secunda is a vital component of
Mpumalanga’s manufacturing sector. The company has two propylene manufacturing plants and recently completed two major investments aimed at improving flows and expanding production.
Propylene is an input for polypropylene which is used in packaging, automotive components and textiles. The market is growing in South Africa at 4% per annum, roughly the same rate as the global market.
A large agri-processing fruit hub is planned for the province. Located in the Nkomazi Special Economic Zone, the proposed hub, with an estimated value of R10-billion, would deal with the whole value chain from growing fruit through to processing, marketing and logistics. Having manufacturing facilities at the core of the hub will enable a variety of businesses to be established, both upstream (to supply the plant) and downstream (to deal with the products of the plant).
Creative thinking kicked in when Highveld Steel’s troubles reached the tipping point in 2015. Aside from the business rescue process, which has allowed some production to restart, there is some irony in the that fact that the 1 000ha property has been repurposed as a multi-purpose site for industry and commerce. Called the Highveld Industrial Park, this project has had the effect of promoting a diversity of manufacturing enterprises, something which has been a priority for economic planners for many years.
Stockpiles of coal and vanadium are being sold off, but two iron plants and a steel plant offer fully-equipped metallurgical and steelmaking facilities, supported by environmental monitoring services and metallurgical and chemical laboratories.
The structural mill of Evraz Highveld Steel in Witbank was officially relaunched in June 2017 after ArcelorMittal South Africa signed a contract to supply blooms and slabs for the mill to make into heavy structural steel. Evraz Highveld went into business rescue in 2015. ArcelorMittal has now exercised its right to purchase the mill outright.
Future plans
The provincial government has declared that it is determined “to turn Mpumalanga into a manufacturing hub for South Africa and the rest of the continent”. To that end, partnerships with Russia, China and Italy have been established to improve local knowledge of technology and
ONLINE RESOURCES
Highveld Industrial Park: www.highveldindustrialpark.co.za Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency: www.mega.gov.za South African Iron and Steel Institute: www.saisi.co.za to become globally competitive.
This strategy could be said to have paid off when it was announced that Minsk Tractor Works is to establish an assembly plant in the province.
Belarus and Oman are two of the other countries with which Mpumalanga is engaged with. A key objective of the provincial government’s Mpumalanga E c o n o m i c G r o w t h a n d Development Path (MEGDP) is to expand the industrial base of the provincial economy. To do this, policy-makers are focusing on beneficiation, agriprocessing and value chain development.
Samancor Chrome (which runs Ferrometals) is the secondlargest ferrochrome producer in the world with three plants, two of which are in Mpumalanga: eMalahleni (Witbank) and Middelburg.
A S o c i a l E n t e r p r i s e Development Programme has been designed by the Provincial Government of Mpumalanga to help township and rural manufacturing businesses grow in the steel fabrication sector. This will include finished products such as door frames, window frames and concrete products like paving bricks, building bricks and blocks.
