Altech UEC has made 20 million set-top boxes
2 April 2014
News
February 2014 marked the occasion of the twenty millionth set-top box (STB) to roll off Altech UEC’s production line.
Having started manufacturing STBs in 1993, the company’s average output of close to one million units per year has seen it become Africa’s largest developer and manufacturer in this arena.
Danie du Toit, group managing director of Altech Multimedia (under which Altech UEC resides), sees this as an important milestone in the company’s history. “In the past year we invested approximately R60 million in expanding and upgrading our factory infrastructure to cater for demand for terrestrial set-top boxes and this is beginning to pay off,” he says. “On 25 February, our best day to date, we manufactured 39 660 set-top boxes, that is one set-top box off the production line every 2,2 seconds.”
Craig Venter, group executive of Altron TMT, with a memento to mark the milestone.
According to du Toit, the biggest market for Altech UEC at the moment is the rest of Africa thanks to the rollout of digital terrestrial television. “Africa is digitising at an increasing rate, with the sub-Saharan market alone estimated to be in excess of 60 million set-top boxes. With our recent upgrades and our focus on productivity and technology innovation, we have the capability to manufacture seven million set-top boxes per annum,” he states.
Not only did the upgrade to its manufacturing operation lower the cost of production and increase output, it also enabled Altech UEC to create more jobs, in line with the South African government’s job creation objectives.
“The upgrade investments created an additional 120 specialised and sustainable jobs, bringing to more than 700 the number of people employed directly in our manufacturing operations. In addition to this, we have a global design and development team of approximately 130 engineers. As a Level 2 B-BBEE contributor, our investment in technology and production processes is one example of our commitment to creating employment as part of the digital migration process and government’s overall job creation targets,” du Toit concludes.
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