SEW-EURODRIVE South Africa’s Port Elizabeth branch has relocated to Unit 4, Aldo Business Park, Old Cape Road in Greenbushes, reflecting both the growth of the branch and the importance of the Eastern Cape region, according to Branch Manager Francois Sieberhangen.
Although Port Elizabeth is the smallest SEW-EURODRIVE branch nationally, it is showing very promising growth. “We look after some of the largest accounts nationally, and are a major contributor of servo drive technology, AC drives, and decentralised drives,” comments Sieberhangen. The branch services the entire Eastern Cape region, with customers in the automotive, food and beverage, tyre and rubber, wood and timber, and fishing industries, in addition to OEMs and resellers.
The Port Elizabeth branch was established initially as a service-and-repair branch, with minimal assembly taking place. “We have grown tremendously since then, to the point where we outgrew our previous facility completely. In order to keep up with market requirements, we needed larger premises,” Sieberhangen explains. The new 800 m2 building is significantly larger than the original 300 m2 premises.
“We managed the entire move internally with great success. Various tasks were assigned to, and managed by, different employees. Timing was of the essence, as we could only move various components of our sales and operation once critical aspects were in place at our new premises, such as alarm systems, electrical work, compressed air, network, and telephone facilities. We managed the entire move in a couple of days, with little to no disruption to our customers,” Sieberhangen highlights.
“The new premises allow us to implement internal SEW-EURODRIVE requirements. Furthermore, it provides space to employ additional staff. The addition of a mechatronics engineer allows us to improve our technical support and field service to our customers. An additional administrator removes some administrative duties from the sales staff team, who can now focus on processing customer enquiries more efficiently,” Sieberhangen elaborates.