Hydraulics, pneumatics and automation group Bosch Rexroth South Africa took customers on a tour of its production facility in Witfontein, Gauteng, on June 19, as it celebrated its sixtieth anniversary.

The companies operating in the facility include assembly, production and manufacturing systems company Tectra Automation; hydraulic systems company Hytec, as well as Hytec Fluid Technology and Hytec Engineering; hydraulic components distributor Hydraulic and Automation Warehouse; and hydraulic drive company Hägglunds.

Bosch Rexroth South Africa CEO and Bosch Rexroth Africa president Chris Riley told media that the company's foundation was its ability to serve customers in the markets where they operate, and the strong engineering expertise that supports its ability to meet the evolving needs of its customers.

“We have a basket of products that customers rely on, but each customer is different and faces different challenges. We rely on our engineering expertise and our long-standing relationships with our customers to find our customers' pain-points and remediate them.”

Visitors, during the tour of the factories, were shown a range of custom-built equipment, including a machine, built by Tectra, that prints plastic foam components that are used in packaging for pool chemicals.

“However, while we do leverage our engineering competence, built up over many years, we mainly focus on end-users and supply products to original-equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers, including big mining OEMs and agricultural OEMs, while Bosch serves the automotive OEMs,” noted Riley.

The company supports customers from 45 locations in 20 African countries, and has a workforce of more than 900 people. It was acquired by engineering and industrial technology multinational Bosch in 2018.

Its core market was supplying mines with components and equipment, which accounted for about 70% of its work, although it also manufactured a range of products for the automotive, food and beverage and packaging industries, among others, he said.

“In Africa and globally, the trends that we have identified include electrification and the expansion of mines and mining to meet the demand for minerals that this creates. We are seeing customers changing strategies and targeting deeper orebodies. Historically, opencast mines are now going underground,” he said during a media briefing.

Further, Bosch Rexroth opened a high-technology marine division in 2025, as the global disruption of shipping services drove the need for components to service vessels, he added.

Bosch Rexroth has historically been involved in the offshore mining industry, and it is leveraging this expertise to support the marine industry.

“We are well positioned to serve the marine and rail industries, as well as the wind, solar and defence industries,” he said.

In terms of growth, the company was working in four main vertical sectors, including energy, marine and defence, while mining would remain the core of the business and its growth, Riley said.

Further, the company is collaborating on a biodegradable hydraulic oil research and development project with Bosch Rexroth in Germany, a German university and the University of Cape Town.

“South Africa was chosen for this project because we are the mining hub of the group, and a biodegradable oil would be a significant boon to the mining sector,” he said.