South Africa lost 80 percent toolmaking capacity: Afrimold

South Africa has lost 80 percent of its toolmaking capacity. Less than 20 per cent of tools currently used in South Africa are manufactured locally and the average trained toolmaker in South Africa is now 54, which is a point of concern for the industry’s future.

This was the cold truth delivered by Johan van der Merwe, Acting DG of the Gauteng Department for Economic Development at this year’s Afrimold Conference and Exhibition in Sandton, near Johannesburg, where local and Europe’s leading tooling manufacturers are gathered until 29 September.

Experts say although the sector was improving, it was still not able to meet the growing local demand.

“We have made great strides in bringing young blood into the tooling industry. The demand for tooling is proportional to GDP, and as our economy continues to grow, so will demand. Tool making creates quality jobs that are sustainable in the long-term. In fact, for every R100 million worth of tooling manufacturing in South Africa, an additional 400 jobs are created,” says van der Merwe.

The National Tooling Initiative Programme’s (NTIP) CEO, Dirk van Dyk, says: “South Africa has lost more than 80 percent of local capacity since the mid-80’s, which we have had to relinquish back to the EU and Asia.”

The programme was announced by finance minister Pravin Gordhan during his recent budget speech.

Van Dyk says the gap continues to widen, with demand for tooling having doubled in South Africa since 2005. This, he says, is mainly due to the growth of the automotive sector in South Africa, as well as the packaging sector. “We are virtually guaranteed to claw back this loss in market share if we can improve quality, timeliness and correct our costings,” he says.

Van Dyk the manufacturing sector is the second biggest contributor to GDP in South Africa, and the NTIP intended working with the government to regain some of what has been lost. "We do not want to find ourselves in the position of becoming a country that outsources its requirements.”

Both van Dyk and van der Merwe said the tool manufacturing industry has made huge strides as a result of the financial support the DTI and Department of Economic Development has provided to TASA via its public private partnership, the National Tooling Initiative.

“One of the main reasons for the losses South Africa’s manufacturing industry has had to endure is skills erosion.  Yet we are already beginning to see a large turnaround in this with the development of a skills model that encompasses not only basic skills, but core and advanced skills too,” says van Dyk.

More than 28 percent of South Africa's tool room labour is unskilled, while all their German counterparts are skilled. “Too often, we hear people say that old equipment is to blame for lack of delivery, but the real issue is that the equipment we do have is not used efficiently. The money for upgrades and new machinery will come as a result of successful tool rooms. Tooling manufacture is technology driven, so skills are imperative. We often see huge damage being done by unskilled labour – both in terms of productivity and hours lost,” says van Dyk.

He says the NTIP planned to skill about 3600 students by 2015. "In fact, of the 175 students that enrolled in this year’s foundation building phase, 142 passed the exam set by the US Institute for Metalworking. The student’s maths scores improved from an average of 54 to 76, while their science scores almost doubled from 31 to 61. We have found that using high quality teachers is the most important attribute to the successful completion of this course,” says van Dyk.