Company Announcement - South Africa’s s current market conditions are offering limited growth for concrete performance-enhancing admixtures which has accelerated the need for the Chryso Southern Africa Group to seek new markets - and even manufacturing capacity - in other parts of Africa. Norman Seymore, CEO of Chryso Southern Africa and its sister company, a.b.e. Construction Chemicals, who is also vice president of the Chryso Group globally, says for South African admixture producers, the “honeymoon is over” with current demand now firmly back to pre-Soccer World Cup 2010 levels.  “In the build-up to the major FIFA event with its frenetic stadia and infrastructural construction, Chryso supplied large volumes of admixtures to seven new soccer stadia. The stadia were global showpieces and their design called for high performance admixtures to attain superb finishes and speed up construction. The same applied to the infrastructural development that accompanied the World Cup: multi-billion rand projects such as airport and harbour upgrades, as well as Gautrain. However, when these prestigious projects were completed, concrete designs more or less returned to ‘normal’, with project spending far more limited and the need for our performance-boosting products dropping substantially. Cement volumes have also, in any event, dropped significantly since 2010,” Seymore explained.

As a result, cost-saving is of paramount importance when it comes to local production for Chryso and the Group is looking at every possible way of streamlining and improving productivity. “We have, for example, just launched a capital expansion programme at the a.b.e. Isipingo manufacturing operations which, through increased automation, will substantially boost product output without the need for additional staff. “But the local potential will remain limited so we have had no choice but to look at broadening our base and gaining a stronger foothold in the rest of Africa. Today, 15% of the Chryso Southern Africa Group’s sales are generated from outside our borders, and the export side of our business is expanding faster than our local operations. Exports have grown at about 20% a year as Africa spends more and more on infrastructure. That export growth is gratifying, but you must take the very low export base into consideration.

“However, much of the African demand for our products is coming from south of the equator, and if we were to make meaningful inroads into the entire African continental market, we need to counteract the dominance India and Middle East countries currently have in exporting to the northern side of the equator. It has, therefore, become clear that Chryso would have to commit itself to production facilities in both East and West Africa in the near future,” Seymore announced. “We are still considering where exactly - and how - these factories would operate, but we are now committed to making such manufacturing facilities a reality. “Chryso SA has for many years been a market leader in Southern Africa for concrete and cement admixtures and ancillary products, while a.b.e. Construction Chemicals has since as far back as the 1930s been a major supplier of high performance products to the building, civil engineering, maintenance, and manufacturing sectors as well as builders’ merchants and hardware stores. As a combined force, the two companies have an enormous advantage when entering the African market as we are virtually a one-stop shop for an unrivalled range of complementary products and systems,” he stated.

“We see this comprehensive combined offering as a major competitive advantage and intend, in future, to use it as a leverage for direct sales, particularly to South Africa’s major building and civil engineering contractors. Four years after acquiring a.b.e., the local building industry still seems unaware of the fact that the Chryso Southern Africa Group can now offer the full solution for its needs: from foundations to roof. It may be that we have not spelt out this major advantage enough in the past but we now intend making it a priority – even to the point of offering major contractors rebates for commitment to our Group. We are already offering this type of incentive in our export package deals.”