The inaugural meeting of South Africa’s pumps cluster, incorporating seals, couplings and motors in both the mining and industrial sectors, was held on February 7 and saw the cluster planning to take advantage of localisation opportunities, specifically those emanating from State-owned power utility Eskom.

Pumps have been identified by Eskom as one of the strategic commodities through which it will leverage future demand to promote the aims of its supplier development and localisation (SD&L) programme.

The pumps cluster is aiming to organise the sector to take advantage of such localisation opportunities.

This strategy was developed in the context of government’s national policies on industrial growth and development. The scale of Eskom’s current spend and the expected spend, over the next five to ten years, has high-lighted a number of opportunities afforded by Eskom’s plans.

The size of Eskom’s operations and expan- sion presents an opportunity to drive socio-economic development. Over the long term, the company’s procure-ment spend allows it to identify areas where it can directly stimulate economic growth in a sustainable way. Clarification of Eskom’s role in implementing the energy mix requirements of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010, which is currently undergoing an update to take it to 2050, will enable the company to bring critical mass to bear on industrialisation and localisation opportunities resulting from the IRP.

While the South African estimated pumps demand has historically been 0.8% in the last three years, Eskom’s estimated future pumps demand is 11% of South Africa’s forecast future pumps demand.

Current Market Situation
“Locally based subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies dominate the South African and Eskom pumps market. “An analysis of the South African pumps market indicates that the country has both current and potential local capability to manufacture, assemble and refurbish pumps for various end-user sectors,” says pumps cluster chairperson Ernie Muller.

Several skills have been identified for development in consultation with Eskom’s skills programmes, the national scarce skills list and the pumps SD&L strategy.

The objective of the development of a pumps SD&L strategy is to identify oppor-tunities and guide efforts to leverage future spend in order to enhance local content among Eskom’s pumps supplier base, develop existing local suppliers to improve competi-tiveness and develop capacity to export, con-tribute towards the development of scarce skills for Eskom and the national requirements and make a contribution to job retention and creation.

A variety of pumps, such as water feed pumps, condensate extraction pumps and water circulation pumps, are used in the operation of Eskom’s plants.