COMPANY PROFILE
2014
Bidvest TMS Group
+27 11 554 8600 | www.tmsg.co.za
company profile
All-encompassing service from Bidvest Editorial: Roland Douglas Production: Hal Hutchison
Bidvest TMS Group has been steadily expanding its service offering since 1997. Now, with one of the most diverse service portfolios of any group, it seems that the only way is up as companies look to bundle services into one package. Managing director, Danie Otto explains more…
The business plan and strategy of the Bidvest TMS Group is astute and extremely well thought out. At first glance, you look at the list of companies that form the group and you think that they have no right all operating under the same banner, but then you look a little closer and you see that all of the companies have been chosen by Bidvest because of their complimentary qualities and their focus on specific industry sectors and market places. Falling under the Bidvest Services division, Bidvest TMS Group is made up of a group of companies including Vericon, Royal Mnandi, King Pie, BMO Food Services, SA Water and Velocity. And while each company offers a very different service from the last, as a group these companies provide perfectly suited solutions to people and businesses operating up and down a value chain. At the heart of the TMS Group is the industrial
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services offering, something which has formed the core of the business since it became part of Bidvest in 1997. Operating mainly in the petrochemical and energy industries, TMS industrial services offers chemical cleaning, high pressure and ultra-high pressure cleaning, bundle cleaning and many more specialist industrial cleaning services. “Relative to their size, all parts of the business are very productive but the TMS industrial services side of the business is still, by quite a margin, the largest portion of our business,” explains group managing director, Danie Otto. “In that group, the petrochemical and energy industries still hold our largest customer base but this is something that we are trying to change; we don’t want to neglect our customers but we want to make sure we are diversified so that we can mitigate the risk that comes with only being associated with one or two big industries.
Bidvest TMS Group
“If you look at the petrochemical industry, we’re more or less national; we deal with Chevron and Engen and all of the other providers. We are in Sasolburg and Secunda for Sasol and with Eskom we do three plants, mainly in Mpumalanga,” he says.
HEALTHY PORTFOLIO Organic growth has allowed Bidvest TMS to grow exponentially over the years and the companies that have been added to the portfolio have meant the group is now gaining in a reputation as a full service provider. Otto explains more about the interesting history of the group: “TMS came into the Bidvest fold around 1997 and essentially it was a labour and services group at that point in time, providing industrial services to the petrochemical industry. It evolved over time to grow on the disciplines that we are able to offer
from the traditional industrial cleaning services like vacumation and high pressure cleaning to now being able to offer catalyst handling, cold cutting and other very specialised services. While the company has been part of the Bidvest stable it has made further acquisitions including a scaffolding, painting and insulation company in around 2007, and this has allowed us to gain more work in these areas. “Over the years we’ve added further to that fold with Vericon, which is a warehouse distribution and logistics company, and more recently we added Royal Mnandi, a catering company; King Pie, a pie franchise business; SA Water, a water purification and sanitation company and Velocity, which is a UK based company of which we have acquired distribution rights for work here in Africa on road repairs and pothole repairs. It’s a very diverse group of companies so it’s quite exciting.”
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company profile
But it still seems all rather different; a water purification company, a road repair company, a catering firm and an industrial cleaning firm, all working as part of the same group? According to Otto, it makes a lot of sense and having a range of service under one roof has helped clients in a big way. “The services that we provide are very different” he says, “it’s all very specialised but if you look closer you’ll see that our businesses operate in the same industries and that’s the synergy between them – the client base. If you look at petrochemical, mining and industry; they have issues with water purification and recycling of water so it makes sense to offer this as part of a full package. In the mines they have issues with private roads, they run huge vehicles over the roads causing constant damage so we can provide a road maintenance solution while we are there doing other things.
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With Royal Mnandi, each of these industries has staff canteens which we can service with a catering solution. On the surface it doesn’t make too much sense but if you look closer, we operate in exactly the same industries and clients are moving towards bundling those services and looking for a one stop shop.”
ONGOING GROWTH With such a diverse service offering, you might imagine that growing is not a difficult task for Bidvest TMS but Otto says that following the global recession, the business environment has been challenging and the group is now waiting for the perfect time to continue on its impressive growth path. Considering the industrial services division is found at the heart of the group, it comes as no surprise that the business is highly involved in infrastructural development activities, and these
Bidvest TMS Group sort of opportunities are widespread north of the border. “Business is tough at the moment so we are looking at holding on to what we have while the country repositions itself from an infrastructure development point of view,” explains the managing director. “Hopefully through this we will get opportunities but we will have to stick to the basics and make sure we keep our customers happy and not become too greedy. The majority of our involvement is around projects and tender business so when there are big projects coming, we tend to benefit. We can see that there are a lot of plans and a lot of talk but nothing has come to fruition yet but when it does we will be in the running. “As opportunities present themselves we will explore them; Africa is definitely a growth area and we are always looking at ways to establish ourselves there. We operate in the petrochemical industry and Africa has a lot of oil in Nigeria, Ghana and Angola and those areas would definitely be attractive to us from an industrial services point of view. With catering, it’s always associated with
construction and development. In Africa, there are many large construction projects that need food, water and catering and these all present big opportunities for us,” he says. As for infrastructure development in South Africa, the government promises a lot but the feedthrough rate to businesses involved seems to vary. Some have already seen huge benefits from the NDP (National Development Plan) and others are yet to feel any impact. “It depends on which end of the market you play in. Infrastructure development is an extensive operation. If you’re in the civils side of things, you get involved earlier but if you’re in construction and maintenance, you get the benefits further down the line. I would presume that there are people that are seeing the benefit right now and hopefully these will spill into our services sector in the future,” says Otto. In its sector, Bidvest TMS is one of the industry leaders and services national clients including Sasol, Eskom and major mining houses and of course, with customers like this, who are always
Civil & Tool Worx (Pty) Ltd Vision Our vision is to grow our multi-disciplinary team in order to offer a broad spectrum of specialist products and services to the industry and to become our Client’s Preferred Service Provider through excellence and efficiency in all aspects of the project cycle. Whether it is a capital or maintenance project, our company will provide all the products, striving to exceed expectations and set new standards.
Mission Statement
VALUE ADDING SUPPLIER
Civil & Tool Worx (Pty) Ltd
Our Mission is to offer excellent service in each of our disciplines, in accordance with statutory practices, codes of conduct and integrity, thereby developing our team and providing a leading platform from which to service our valued Clients.
www.civiltool.co.za TEL: 011 825 7568 FAX: 086 566 0679 EMAIL: sales@civiltool.co.za
Products Being a multi-disciplinary company, Civil & Tool Worx (Pty) Ltd is a leading supplier and processor of the following steel products: Galvanised
Aluminium
Stainless steel
Chromadek
Our product range also includes: Specialised Paints and Vapour Barriers PPE and Safety Equipment Specialised fastening products General tools and hardware (in excess of 20,000 products)
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Proud supplier to BIDVEST- TMS Group
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company profile
With over 23 years of experience and outlets in all major cities, Storm Machinery continues to be a leading supplier of abrasive sandblasting and spray painting equipment in South Africa
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Tel: +27 (0)11 894 2005 Fax: +27 (0)11 894 2006
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Tel: +27 (0)21 510 6385 Fax: +27 (0)21 510 1873
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sales@stormmachinery.co.za
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growing themselves, growing with them can be a good strategy. “We do maintenance work at places like Sasol; painting, insulation, sandblasting and scaffolding of the big tanks and vessels and we also work for Eskom including insulation for boilers and access scaffolding. “At Medupi and Kusile we do ad-hoc work, we don’t have long-term industrial service contractual obligations there yet. We are currently busy with some project work and we hope to tender for more work as those projects develop,” says Otto.
“It’s a very diverse group of companies so it’s quite exciting” “Royal Mnandi and its joint venture partner, Duduza, currently holds a large catering contract at Kusile so we’re providing Kusile with around 18,000 meals each day. Through this, we also support local businesses. We’ve got development
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suppliers that we are helping to establish and they supply us with food products. For example, there is one lady that we have helped set up a poultry farm and we buy her eggs. We are involved in the community and that’s part of the contract but we really do enjoy this part of it too,” he adds. But growth in the amount of work taken by the group has to be backed up by development of the workforce and while Otto recognises this as a challenge, he says that the company is working tirelessly to help upskill employees. “We employ a large labour force and from a skills point of view, it’s a constant challenge for us to upskill people and find people with the skills to operate in our industry. As demand and infrastructure development takes effect, those skills become even scarcer. We are part of the services division so we have invested in a facility where we can run internships for certain skills including welding and electrical skills so we have in-house control over catering for those skill requirements.”
GOING GREEN Whether or not you are ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘green’ is one of the hot topics for businesses in South
Bidvest TMS Group
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company profile
Africa at the moment. Every month we speak to organisations that view the issue in very different ways; for some it’s a bugbear, for others it’s welcomed and in the case of Bidvest TMS, Otto sees it as an opportunity, saying: “It is a focus point for us and provides an opportunity to become creative and distinguish ourselves in the market place.
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“There’s a huge focus on being green; the ‘green’ tag comes up often and we pay a lot of attention to improving our systems, processes and methods to become more environmentally friendly. It’s with everything from the equipment we purchase to the systems that we implement. We have internal auditing departments that look at this extensively. This makes the playing field
Bidvest TMS Group slightly more difficult to negotiate because often these things come with additional costs. We have a committee that looks after innovation on an on-going basis from an industrial cleaning point of view so that interacts with SA Water and SA Water, with their recycling abilities and design capabilities, are very often in demand to assist people with waste water and recycling,” he adds. This focus on being as environmentally friendly as possible is not something new, it does in fact come through right from the top of the Bidvest Group where a sustainability policy has been developed stating that, in all divisions, the strive for reducing environmental impact is on-gong. The group states: “We strive in everything we do to leave our planet in good working order for future generations.” On the back of the NDP, the then Minister of Finanace Pravin Gordhan announced in his 2013 Budget Speech that over the three years from 2013/14 the government would invest R827 billion in the building of new and the upgrading of existing infrastructure and this obviously represents a huge opportunity for the Bidvest TMS Group. With the new power stations
progressing nicely and talk of other major energy projects to be announced in the near future, it looks as though Bidvest TMS, with its many skills and specialities, is set for a very positive future indeed.
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“It’s all very specialised but if you look closer you’ll see that our businesses operate in the same industries and that’s the synergy between them – the client base”
Meet Danie Otto “I’ve been with Bidvest now for 23 years, I started off on the contract cleaning side, not industrial but more commercial, with offices and banks but my background is legal. I started off studying law and I ended up in the cleaning sector and I’m still here. I came through the ranks with Prestige and I was operations director for Prestige for a number of years and then I became managing director before being transferred to TMS around five years ago.”
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