Company Announcement - Festo South Africa has had an exciting year and as 2014 draws to a close, the company is reflecting on its business decisions of the past year. This year saw Festo engaging in some bold strategic moves; despite a difficult economic climate, Festo actively participated in growing the company through expansions that have paid off. Festo is a company with a long-term perspective that recognises the importance of developing, maintaining and expanding infrastructure and facilities. “In order to realise our growth potential and to continue to grow our market position worldwide, we need to take proactive decisions that will enable sustainable growth moving forward,” explains Brett Wallace, General Manager, Festo.

During the first quarter of 2014 Festo South Africa made the strategic decision to significantly increase its stock holding capacity. “As a worldwide leader in automation and a world market leader in industrial training and development, our company always seeks to stay one step ahead,” reiterates Wallace.“Our 16 700 employees in 176 countries continue to pursue a common goal of maximum productivity and competitiveness.”

This first initiative required expansions in both resource and facilities investments in order to be able to cope with an immediate stock increase of more than 30%.  “As a company, we keep our fingers on the pulse to ensure that we make correct and timeous business decisions that will benefit both our customers and our brand,” continues Wallace. “This decision was based on market understanding and a desire to enhance service delivery performance, supporting our customers through ever increasing completive demands.” This was a bold strategic initiative, during a declining and conservative market period. Despite this, the move was well executed and the results inspired confidence in our move to expand.

Reflecting on the past and current success of this proactive initiative, an even bolder strategic move was made to once again expand facilities and resource support during the final quarter of 2014. “This is in preparation for yet another increase to our national stock capacity by an enormous 50%,” says Wallace. “As with our previous proactive approach, we made this decision in anticipation of market expectations and future growth potential.”

“It is imperative that we remain proactive in our business strategy and our decisions have clearly paid off. These decisions we made have seen a twofold increase from both a sea freight and volume perspective” concludes Wallace.