Steel products distributor Macsteel has established Macsteel Foundation Solutions, which provides customers in the construction industry with steel-based construction and innovative lateral support services and products.

The new business is part of the company’s strategy to reimagine and re-engineer its business model to drive growth for the company and create value for construction-sector customers and across untapped markets in Africa.

“The foundation solutions we offer are steel-based construction and innovative lateral support services and products. With the incorporation of Foundation Solutions, Macsteel can now offer a basket of steel products and a full range of turn-key solutions to our customers,” Macsteel Foundation Solutions business development specialist Alex Fernandes says.

“A significant part of our strategy is focused on partnering with our customers in the early stages of a project so we’re able to provide strategic support from design to installation in providing cost-effective steel solutions to our customers for both temporary and permanent structures.

“We understand the importance of remaining agile and relevant and pursuing reinvention means finding new ways to grow our business and enabling our customer to grow at the same time,” he says.

Given South Africa’s stressed economy, Macsteel has focused on learning to do more with less by investing in expertise, equipment and stock to offer more products and more services to new and existing customers in the construction industry, driven through its existing sales channels.

Macsteel Foundation Solutions is differentiated from conventional construction services in Southern Africa and the rest of Africa, through the provision of the application of sheet piles. Sheet piles have been used in construction for more than 100 years for traditional water conservancy, civil engineering, transport networks, environmental pollution remediation and sudden disaster control.

“The use of sheet piles is proving to be a modern and innovative solution to solve costly construction and lateral support challenges specifically in Africa. With the threat of extreme climatic events, the use of sheet piles will become more prevalent in the future, used to protect vulnerable communities and infrastructure in Africa,” adds Fernandes.

The sheet piles solution is a set of vertical, continuously interlocking sheet piles that forms a flexible vertical wall called a retaining wall, which is built to retain earth, water or any other filling material, to ensure the works area is protected from collapse, he explains.