Current Status of the South African Foundry Industry, John Davies – CEO: South African Institute of Foundrymen (SAIF)

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Davies, painted a balanced scenario of the current state-of-industry, outlining where the industry is globally positioned, with half a million tonnes of cast metal coming from South Africa, compared to the world output exceeding 105 million cast tonnes per annum. Davies, discussed the opportunities for the foundry sector within various market segments with the hope that designation, once the orders start coming through, will have a significant impact on both the volume and quality of castings produced and thereby mitigating the recent high closure rate of foundries in South Africa a reversing the damaging effects of import leakage.

The presentation given by Davies, also focused on cost saving through process improvements, supporting the NFTNs outlook of developing a sound supply chain and not just simply discounting the price. Rapidly rising energy costs, low labour productivity, increasing cost of logistics and the shortages of skills continue to plague the foundry sector but interventions that address all of these challenges and that will enable modern technologies to be made available to even the small foundries are already in progress.

Davies, highlighted the role of SAIF as means to leverage both increased demand and new technology to grow the industry, improve competitiveness and build human capacity.