To remain competitive in the African market, South African structural steel fabricators must ensure they add more value to steel products and move away from the current commodity model, which is based on supplying ex-works fabricated products.

A solutions-based model should be used instead, which offers a turnkey fabricated steel solution, International Steel Fabricators (ISF) director Neels van Niekerk tells Engineering News.

Where South Africa once found success in the flexibility, quality, aesthetics and punctuality of its structural steel exports, the demand for these characteristics has decreased, as they seem to be not quite what Africa increasingly requires, he notes.

The South African steel-fabricating industry is based on British methods, standards and procedures, which focus on high-quality design and manufacturing standards to ensure flexibility and durability, which have helped make steel a more common building material in South Africa than in the rest of the continent.

Van Niekerk says, excluding mining and roofing applications, sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has a largely concrete-only construction culture and the growth in fabricated steel consumption hardly matches that of other building materials. Countries in Africa typically use structural steel only where it is absolutely necessary.

“This is evident not only in construction activities at numerous sites in the region’s countries, but also when comparing the large number of cement factories with the small number of small, scrap-based light-steel mills in these cities,” he notes.

Therefore, if the benefits of steel offerings from South Africa are not to be lost, South Africa needs to consider moving to more optimised Middle East and Far East pre-engineered metal building models, which focus on removing costs throughout the value chain, thereby resulting in cost-effective alternatives.

Implementing the concept of pre-engineered metal buildings, which typically use 30% to 40% less steel, while providing the same strength as conventional steel and other buildings, is gaining support in Africa and is spreading quickly from the north to the south, says Van Niekerk.

“The key future focus point needed to win market share in sub-Saharan Africa is to offer a competitive, turnkey value-added solution, which can only be achieved by critically examining all South Africa’s fabrication cost factors,” he says.

South African structural steel fabricators need to target markets with steel solutions in much the same way as the agricultural industry has exported South African steel-based agricultural products such as central-pivot irrigation systems.

“Here, the successes seem to be based on South African companies not only supplying the product but also a complete agri-engineering solution – from producing the product to the establishment of overseas markets for these products,” notes Van Niekerk.

South Africa’s steel industry should, over the next ten years, also have a stronger focus on supplying its fabricated structural steel to infrastructure projects, including the construction of numerous road and rail bridges in Southern Africa.

Similarly, tens of thousands of kilometres of electricity transmission lines will also be built in sub-Saharan Africa, Van Niekerk points out.

South African-manufactured products are actively and successfully marketed throughout the sub-Saharan Africa region, notably in Mozambique. However, further afield, it seems as if mostly South African steel merchants, roofing companies and civil construction members are active.

In response to this, in the first half of this year, the ISF increased its efforts to directly market South Africa’s structural steel industry in Mozambique, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi by visiting existing and prospective clients, as well as by attending industry exhibitions and Department of Trade and Industry-supported missions.

To further market its member organizations as potential suppliers of African projects, the ISF is taking its largest-ever delegation to the Africa Down Under mining convention in August, which is held yearly in Perth, Western Australia. The ISF will exhibit at the event and will also have preconference sessions with major potential clients, adds Van Niekerk.