Company Announcement - Yokogawa South Africa (Pty) Ltd celebrated the official opening of their office yesterday in Amanzimtoti, reinforcing its commitment to local customers in the KwaZulu-Natal region from sensor to enterprise integration. The new office will complement Yokogawa’s existing sales, after-sales services and training capabilities in KZN.

In accordance with Yokogawa South Africa’s localisation objectives and in recognition of KZN’s importance as a regional hub in the sugar and petrochemical sectors, the main objectives of the new facility are:

• To build sustainable partnerships with customers in the region and fully understand their requirements;
• To offer solutions based on the customers’ needs;
• To provide better, more effective, and speedier project services to customers;
• To contribute to our customers’ business efficiency by reducing the cost of project execution and reducing the project execution cycle time, and
• To offer local service and more responsive training programmes.

Johan Louw, Managing Director of Yokogawa South Africa commented, “As a global leader in Industrial Automation, Yokogawa continues its relentless pursuit of excellence and reaffirms its indisputable market position in KwaZulu-Natal. Yokogawa addresses customers’ concerns of efficiency, safety & security, availability and human reliability to ensure sustainable growth for our customers by helping them achieve operational excellence.”

Since February 2009, Yokogawa has been providing training and development courses that are specially tailored to the needs of the Industrial Automation Industry. Yokogawa’s training programmes range from lectures on automation theory to practical hands on training on simulators for real plant operation. Yokogawa also provides short courses taught by our experienced facilitators and experts to meet the industry’s needs and requirements. The courses cover not only control and instrumentation but also various other fields in which Yokogawa has expertise, including quality management, health, safety and environment management.

Louw continues, “As a customer centric organisation, we wish to achieve comprehensive and effective sales and services coverage, improving customer satisfaction across the KZN region. Yokogawa aims to create value together with our customers and help make our societies more sustainable. We always look for those contributions that only Yokogawa can make by leveraging our technical strengths.”

Yokogawa first entered the South African market in 1978 when a local company was appointed as the sole distributor for Yokogawa process control instrumentation. In 1997 Yokogawa South Africa (Pty) Ltd was established which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Yokogawa Europe BV. In 2013, Yokogawa South Africa migrated to the Yokogawa Middle East & Africa Region. Yokogawa’s Head office is located in Johannesburg, with other satellite offices in Sasolburg and Cape Town. The event coincides with Yokogawa’s centenary celebrations, marking 100 years since Tamisuke Yokogawa, Doctor of Architectural Engineering, established an electric meter research institute in Shibuya, Tokyo.