COMPANY PROFILE
2014
Southern Air Conditioning The Western Cape’s coolest company
CompANY PROFILE
The Western Cape’s coolest company Editorial: Roland Douglas Production: Ajuanne Payne
Southern Air Conditioning is Western Cape’s largest air conditioning contractor. Founded in 1971, the company has built up years of first class experience. IndustrySA speaks to Director, Mark Botha to find out more about the company’s plans for continued growth.
In today’s modern building projects, especially structures looking to attract large amounts of people, customer comfort is often the first thing to be discussed at planning meetings. Of course, a buildings external aesthetic appeal is of huge importance but internally there are also a number of factors that have to be taken into account. Everything is designed with customer comfort in mind and one of the most important considerations in any building that houses people is temperature – too hot and people will complain and leave, too cold and people will not want to come back. While this may sound obvious, solutions to temperature issues are far from easy. There are also health and safety concerns that have to be addressed. How many times have you heard people complain about the lack of air conditioning in hotel rooms or the noise
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and environmental impact that these systems have? Many modern systems are designed with ingenious systems that make the most of airflow and ensure that minimal detrimental effects on the environment are realised. Take the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe. This structure (providing 5,600 m² of retail space and 26,000 m² of office space) was designed to be ventilated and cooled by entirely natural means. Then there is the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. This mega structure (2.5 million ft² shopping centre) utilises traditional air conditioning systems but heating the enormous space has been met with an altogether more creative solution. The mall uses solar radiation through skylights, lighting fixture heat and people heat. The skylights let in light which is converted into heat, like a giant green house, and the lighting fixtures give off heat, which is typically considered waste energy, but is
Southern Air Conditioning
SAC supplied and installed air conditioning in Cape Town’s Canal Walk an important part of heating the building. The people inside generate a lot of heat too. In fact, the guests generate enough heat during peak winter hours that the air conditioning system runs on high to keep the mall comfortable. In South Africa, the major shopping centres and other high profile buildings, such as the V&A Waterfront, Canal Walk, Cavendish Square, Mountain Mill, SHG House and Stellenbosch Square, have all required complicated and high-tech air conditioning systems to ensure the comfort of customers and they all turned to one of the country’s industry leaders in this sector, Southern Air Conditioning (SAC). SAC was established over 40 years ago and specialises in the design, supply, installation and maintenance of air conditioning and ventilation systems. The company’s focus on service excellence has gained it a reputation
as ‘the Western Cape’s largest and most successful air conditioning contractor’. Director, Mark Botha tells IndustrySA that following on from a list of high-profile completed projects, the company is busy with a number of major new developments, notably the Baywest and Motlosana malls in Port Elizabeth and Klerksdorp respectively. “We are busy with a project called Eikestad Mall and the V&A Waterfront, we’ve just finished a project refitting the Media24 building on the Foreshore and we’ve recently finished a number of other local and regional shopping centres. “Another big project for us is the Motlosana Mall in Klerksdorp, a project from the same developer as the Baywest Mall,” he says. When complete in early 2015, the R1.7billion Baywest Mall will cover 80,000m² and will be the one of the
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CompANY PROFILE
SSD Controls specializes in the sales, engineering, installation and maintenance of energy efficient building control products and building management systems (BMS). We are a complete solutions provider and are able to design and implement control solutions for any building that requires automation, whether for heating, cooling, ventilation, humidification, dehumidification or pressure control. We are proud suppliers and installers of Honeywell, Centraline, Alerton and Tridium. Physical address:
Postal address:
Contact numbers:
Email:
Unit 8 Cavi Court Killarney Gardens Cape Town
P.O. Box 50098 West Beach Cape Town 7449
Tel: 021 557 2056
Admin: yvonne@ssdcontrols.co.za Service: luke@ssdcontrols.co.za General: paul@ssdcontrols.co.za andre@ssdcontrols.co.za petrus@ssdcontrols.co.za
Fax number: 086 684 8369 Web: www.ssdcontrols.co.za
largest shopping centres in the Eastern Cape. “The construction has started and we are due to be on site with the builder in January,” explains Botha. “The products and brands that we use are different for each project and are very much project dependent. On the Motlosana and Baywest projects we predominantly use HPI (Heat Pump International) equipment and Dunham Bush equipment. “These are some of the flagship projects for the company, some of the biggest we’ve undertaken in terms of value,” he says.
YEARS OF STRENGTH One of the aims for SAC in the coming months and years is growth. The company is well set for expansion as it has a strong, longstanding, experienced employee base, many of whom have worked for SAC for a number of years. “The business was founded in 1971. The current owners are the second generation owners of the company; we bought out from the original owners between ten and 15 years ago. It’s still the same philosophy, in the same premises; we have looked to continue and grow on the success,” says Botha. “Our projects are very labour intensive. We try to be as automated as we can when it comes to manufacturing but
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the site installation is very labour intensive. “On all of our projects we use our own people who have been with us for a number of years. We retired an employee earlier this year who had been here for 41 years. Most of our staff stay with us and this means we don’t have to hire and fire and we try and keep people employed all the time.” It is because of the emphasis that the company places on its employees that they are recognised as one of the best in the business. Botha explains, as we have heard from many businesses in the past, that happy people equals happy product and happy product equals happy customer. “The staff are very happy because they are well looked after and because we look after them we get a good result at the end of the project. Because we get a good result, we are first in line for the next project and the cycle continues. “We do a lot of training and spend a lot money in this sector. Most of the labour force and artisan training is done via an initiative that has been set up by SARACCA (South African Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Contractors’ Association) and other engineering staff are mentored within the company and sent on whatever courses are needed.”
Southern Air Conditioning Of course, with this sort of training and development comes opportunities for career expansion and this keeps employees hungry. Botha explains that there are many examples within the SAC business where employees have started at the bottom and worked their way up. “There are absolutely opportunities for development. We have many people working for us now who joined us a school leavers and labourers and are now supervisors and foremen.”
AFRICAN EXPANSION SAC is based in Motague Gardens, Cape Town and has completed major projects all over the Western Cape, and further across the country. The company has worked with some of the country’s largest and most reputable contractors including NMC, Murray and Roberts, WBHO, Group 5, Grinaker LTA and Power Construction. When operating on projects outside of the Western Cape, SAC likes to take members of their experienced team to lead local contractors so that they can maintain their extremely high service standards. “We take our core artisans and supervisors from Cape Town but we often employ a lot of local labour when we go away on projects. In Port Elizabeth, for the Baywest project, we will employ a lot of local people there,” says Botha.
This is obviously has a fantastic impact on the communities in which SAC operate. “It’s not just individuals in the community; we have an impact on the local suppliers of materials, equipment and everything we need for the job,” he says. In the near future, operating in more remote locations, especially on the continent, will become easier for SAC as the company has recently invested in some new technology that will allow for onsite duct manufacturing – previously a prolonged and complicated part of the process. “We’ve just spent a huge amount of money on a mobile workshop which we can put up on a building site and manufacture all of our ducting, which is the time consuming part of our job,” explains Botha. “We will save a huge amount of time and transport costs and we can take this workshop anywhere in Africa. We’re self-sufficient; we’ve got our own generators and as long as we have a satellite connection we can make the workshop operate. With the infrastructure we have put in place we could look at expansion into anywhere in Africa, but it is not something we are considering at this stage. “It’s nice that people have the ambition to do jobs faster and faster and you have to stay on top of technology.” Of course, installing first class systems is only part of
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CompANY PROFILE
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We’re proud to be associated with Southern Airconditioning!
APM Terminals
As part of the ever-growing national Fourways Airconditioning group, we at Fourways Aircon Cape are proud to be part of Southern Air Conditioning’s success as they expand their current operations within South Africa and beyond. Sales of our range of top-quality Samsung airconditioners and Eco Heating systems, as well as our popular Alliance airconditioners and Heat Pumps are also on the up-andup throughout Southern Africa, and we look forward to a continued mutually beneficent partnership with Southern Airconditioning in the years to come!
68A Lauda Road, Killarney Gardens 7441 Tel: (021) 556 8292 . Fax: (021) 556 8294
CAPE
www.samsungair.co.za www.allianceair.co.za www.allianceheatpumps.co.za
the job for SAC. When installation is complete, the company’s 12 month maintenance program begins. Both the Baywest and Motlosana mall projects and the other contracts on the horizon for SAC will have 12 month guarantee and maintenance options to ensure on-going quality. “We have one or two long term projects in the pipeline and all of our contracts include a 12 month maintenance and guarantee option so, with Baywest for example, for at least the first year we will look after the project and if it is successful we will hope to look after it
Air conditioning refers to the process of altering the condition of air in order to cool, heat or disinfect. There are often academic arguments surrounding the historical origin of air conditioning but the widely accepted theories suggest that in ancient Egypt reeds were hung in windows and were moistened with trickling water. The evaporation of water cooled the air blowing through the window, though this process also made the air more humid (also beneficial in a dry desert climate). In Ancient Rome, water from aqueducts was circulated through
going forward.” With the government investing in infrastructure projects and many private companies investing in large scale industrial projects, now is a good time for SAC. With a long list of successful projects, SAC boast a staff a huge amount of experience and a commitment to fantastic service. With the demand for air conditioning not likely to wain anytime soon, it looks like SAC has an exciting future. Botha concludes by saying: “We are very proud of our installations and we like to maintain them.”
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the walls of certain houses to cool them. Other techniques in medieval Persia involved the use of cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season. Modern air conditioning emerged from advances in chemistry during the 19th century, and the first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier. The introduction of residential air conditioning in the 1920s helped enable the great migration to the Sun Belt in the US.
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+27 21 551 6180 www.southernair.co.za
(0)1603 618 000 info@industrysa.com East Coast Promotions Ltd, Ferndale Business Centre, 1 Exeter Street. Norwich, Norfolk NR2 4QB