Company Announcement - Original equipment manufacturer Booyco Engineering of Meadowdale, Johannesburg has announced that it will achieve the significant milestone of 30 years in business in February 2015. The company specialises in mobile air conditioning and environmental control systems used by the military, rail and mining/earthmoving sectors.
“We have specialised in supplying custom-designed air conditioning systems since we started the company in 1985 with only four employees. Today our staff complement includes engineers who are highly qualified experts in their fields,” Jeremy Pougnet, CEO of Booyco Engineering, says.
The company is set to double its number of factory workers over the next 18 months and expand its assembly facility in anticipation of a slew of contracts related to major procurement announcements from Transnet and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa. Such is the flow of work emanating from this long-term locomotive and commuter train build programme that Booyco Engineering has a solid order book for the next four years. This marks the latest stage in the transformation of Booyco Engineering from a specialist military sector supplier to a force to be reckoned with in the global railway sector.
“It has been my ambition at Booyco Engineering that we become a significant supplier of original equipment in global markets,” Pougnet says. “We are well on our way to achieving this. It is clear that Booyco Engineering is regarded at a high level by the top rolling stock builders in the world. This is good for Booyco Engineering and for South Africa as a whole.” Pougnet adds: “Some impressive statistics have emerged with respect to our climate control systems from the railway sector, indicating very low numbers of failures per million kilometres, which is the international yardstick of reliability for this sector. By world standards we are obtaining good results, and the global railway fraternity is sitting up and taking notice.”
In order to be both efficient and competitive, Booyco Engineering is ramping up its assembly facility in Meadowdale, Johannesburg. “Due to the fact that the projects we are taking on represent sizeable volumes, we will be adopting a ‘flow line’ assembly process. We are busy rolling out a new factory layout. There is also a whole lot of new equipment that we are installing. This represents a step change in the efficiency and utilisation of two critical factors, namely space and manpower.”
“The work we have done over the last 30 years has brought us to a point where we not only have a strong business, but an adaptable business model to carry us forward,” Pougnet says. “Our real differentiating factor is our responsiveness to our clients’ requirements, hand-in-hand with our flexibility.” “An advantage of a company of our size is that we are able to make quick decisions and can change direction quite quickly. Clearly we are internationally competitive, in addition to being able to deliver bespoke engineering solutions. Really we are in about as good a position as a company could wish to be, being a major player in terms of long-term local contracts, but also being able to play the game at a world class level.”