Company Announcement - SMC Pneumatics (South Africa) Pty Ltd has announced the appointment of Johan Bester as its new Head of Sales. Responsible for sales to existing and new customers through direct and indirect channels, Bester who takes up his new post immediately, will report into Adrian Buddingh, SMC South Africa’s recently appointed General Manager. Johan Bester joins SMC, global leaders in pneumatics and industrial automation, after completing his tenure as National Sales Manager at a locally represented Italian pneumatics supplier for the past two years. His previous experience includes over 17 years’ experience with a local German pneumatic supplier.

“I look forward to bringing my 19 years of automation experience to SMC. Our goal is to provide customized solutions, tailored to customer needs" says Bester. "My goal is to help grow SMC's market share through our customer centric view, and in turn help customers grow their own business and productivity in return" adds Bester.

Through its extensive product range and technical expertise, SMC will be able to offer a wide variety of different industrial automation, motion control and process applications. The company employs more than 1400 research and development engineers at its technical centres in Japan, China, USA and Europe.

According to Bester, SMC concentrates on face to face customer communication. To this end, 23% of the company's 22 000 global employees are highly trained technical sales engineers. The plan is to follow suit in South Africa with Johan commenting that he is currently setting up a highly qualified sales team to support local customers. Plans are already underway to fill 40 sales positions by mid 2015. "The serious investment being made by SMC Corporation Japan and the international training and support being provided to the South African subsidiary, should give the market and potential customers the confidence that SMC is in it for the long haul" concludes Bester.

General Manager, Adrian Buddingh commented, “Johan brings a wealth of knowledge to SMC.  I’ve known him for many years and been fortunate to work with him, and his experience and know-how will be a real asset to SMC as we look to expand our activities in the African market.”