The Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Mr Parks Tau, says South Africa cannot grow, cannot create jobs at the requisite scale and build a resilient economy, without a strong manufacturing and engineering base.
He was addressing attendees at the opening of the premises of Brimis Engineering in Middelburg, Mpumalanga.
The company is a black-owned mechanical engineering firm that specialises in industrial valve and pump lifecycle management. It also provides technical support, maintenance, and products for heavy industries such as mining, power generation, petrochemicals, and water treatment.
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) provided approximately R46 million in incentive support for Brimis Engineering and this helped to fund the investment and expansion of the Middelburg facility. Other government support agencies have also been part of the company’s 13-year journey.
Tau said government support is essential to enabling companies thrive and prosper because industrial capability is expensive and slow to build, and because the market alone does not always fund it, particularly black businesses.
“State support exists to close that gap: to de-risk the first investment, to back the entrepreneur who has the engineering insight but not yet the balance sheet, and to make sure that when a company is ready to grow, that growth happens townships like Middelburg, in Mpumalanga, in South Africa, and not somewhere else.”
He added that government’s localisation programme directed approximately R86,6 billion of public procurement towards South African-made goods and services in the last financial year. We are targeting R100 billion this year.
“Every rand of that target is only meaningful if there are companies on the ground with the technical capability to deliver on it. Companies that can machine a component, refurbish a pump, fabricate a valve, or execute a plant shutdown safely and on time. This is what transformation is supposed to look like. Not a target met on paper, but a company like this one, generating its own revenue, its own jobs, its own intellectual property, and its own future. A company that grew from roughly R8 million in turnover in 2019 to approximately R150 million by 2024, and that today employs 122 people, the majority of them young South Africans,” Tau said.
Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Mr Parks Tau, addressing guests at the official opening of the manufacturing facility of Brimis Engineering in Middelburg. The facility was partly funded by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) through its incentive programmes.
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