Grand Tellumat Manufacturing (GTM), the electronics manufacturing plant in Retreat, Cape Town, combines advanced localisation expertise and broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) credentials to help government and private sector entities satisfy diverse procurement regulations.
Duncan Pollock, business development manager at GTM – a JV between black-owned and JSE-listed Grand Parade Investments and the Tellumat Group (also black empowered) – says the plant’s use of local content and its B-BBEE score give its clients extraordinary leverage in the local market.
“Local skills and components are a requirement in a list of designated products for government procurement, by suppliers to government and by owners of national and local government issued licences. As for B-BBEE, all public sector and private sector organisations that wish to do business with municipalities, government departments and any state-owned entities must be in possession of a valid BEE-rating certificate.
“BEE scorecards are heavily weighted towards ownership, an area in which GTM ranks particularly highly (74,94% black-owned, of which 14,19% are black women). As a Level 3 Contributor to the B-BBEE Codes, the manufacturing company’s BEE score lifts its customers’ own BEE profile through their procurement score – which likewise enjoys a heavy weighting in companies’ B-BBEE profile,” says Pollock.
As GTM offers an end-to-end range of manufacturing and assembly services, its customers have all the more opportunity to ramp up their scores as much as they need to. With services including strategic sourcing, assembly, integration, testing, QA and logistics, GTM’s involvement can be as minimal as populating a printed circuit board and wrapping it in anti-static plastic for pick-up, or as extensive as assisting with product development and industrialisation through to full component sourcing, manufacturing, integration and testing, packaging and shipment.
With its variety of services, GTM has been able to satisfy its clients’ local content and BEE requirements on hugely diverse items, manufacturing products like solar power inverters and combiners, satellite vehicle tracking units, traffic light controllers and slot machines.
In the area of slot machine assembly for licensed casinos and limited pay-out machine (LPM) route operators, GTM either enters into a contract manufacturing agreement directly with the international slot machine manufacturer, their local subsidiaries or distributors and, in so doing, provides locally sourced, manufactured and assembled cabinets.
Pollock explains that Grand Parade Investments, an investment holding company with holdings in the gaming market, partnered in the creation of GTM to leverage synergies between its own contacts in the sector and Tellumat’s contract electronics manufacturing expertise.
Through this combination of skills and relationships, the parties were able to secure the local manufacturing rights for slots brought into the country by Merkur Gaming in Germany, Gold Club in Slovenia and more recently Atlas Gaming from Australia, in which GPI has recently acquired a 4,95% stake.
But whatever the particular case and rationale, the company takes pride in creating South African jobs and helping with B-BBEE and local content compliance.“ Local content thresholds are a requirement around the world, and we applaud it. Locally, the key drivers are job creation and retention as well as the support and stimulation of new and existing businesses through equal economic opportunity.
“It’s a real feather in the cap of the dti and trade and investment agencies such as Wesgro that they’re so active in this area, and a source of great satisfaction to us that we’re able to contribute to the national project of transformation and inclusive economic regeneration,” concludes Pollock.
Local is the law
All national and provincial departments, municipalities, government agencies and state-owned companies must adhere to local content prescriptions when procuring goods and services in offerings where minimum local content thresholds have been prescribed. Similarly, suppliers are required to meet the minimum content threshold in order to continue providing goods and services to the public sector.
The dti appointed the SA Bureau of Standards as SA’s local content verification agency. The SABS has since published the approved South African Technical Specification (SATS 1286) for the measurement and verification of local content.
For more information contact Duncan Pollock, Grand Tellumat Manufacturing, +27 (0)21 710 2911, [email protected], www.grandtellumat.com
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