The South African business of Germany-based Phoenix Contact has expanded its value-added centre (VAC), in Randburg, as part of its continued efforts to provide its customers with manufacturing product solutions.

Phoenix Contact – which is an industrial automation, interconnection and interface solutions provider – had been running its VAC on a smaller scale for the past 18 months, but South Africa GM Carl Kleynhans says positive customer feedback encouraged the company to move the VAC to both a larger space and to better market the benefits it can provide.

“We’ve kept it on a bespoke kind of basis, and it’s been successful. The feedback we’ve received from customers is that they see value in [Phoenix Contact] being able to offer them bigger parts of their solutions without competing with them,” he explains, emphasising that the company has no intention of competing with its customers.

The larger VAC was launched on August 19, and can be further expanded, should growth and customer demand encourage it, says Kleynhans.

He further enthuses to Engineering News that the VAC can help customers “anywhere and in any way” once designs, according to the customer’s specifications, have been submitted through Phoenix’s free-to-use Project Complete software.

National sales and marketing manager Dereck Styane explains that Project Complete gives customers the ability to design their product or item with the necessary specifications, as per their requirements, and submit the design to Phoenix Contact for manufacture.

While the company does not handle the certification aspect of the products, the company does handle the assembly, with all required accessories, for the customer. This, Styane says, “takes the hassle out of repetitive business or [items] that need to be built”.

Phoenix Contact issues all completed designs with a quality control certificate when delivered, ensuring that “there is no wastage, and that the client gets the exact product he or she wants”.