The industrial group aims to spend this money by 31 March 2026 and follows it by investing R220-million on capital expansion in the past year.
ACTOM, the largest manufacturer and supplier of electro-mechanical equipment in Sub-Saharan Africa, plans to invest R400-million in expanding production capacity over the next few months, according to its CEO Mervyn Naidoo.
Speaking at the launch of its subsidiary, LH Marthinusen’s R32-million industrial fan production facility, in Germiston, Gauteng, Naidoo said the group was looking to spend a further R400-million on not only “new production capacity for manufacturing, aftermarket services, but also in terms of acquisitions of businesses to thereby increase our capacity.”
ACTOM’s strategic R400-m investment
ACTOM plans to spend this amount by 31 March 2026.
This commitment to invest in increasing production follows it already spending R220-million on capital investment to grow its manufacturing and aftermarket services in its factories throughout the country and the other countries it operates in the past year.
This latest commitment to increase capacity came after ACTOM invested R100-million in expanding its Pretoria plant in 2023.
Aside from investing in LH Marthinusen’s industrial fan production facility, ACTOM has also invested in a new training centre facility that offers a variety of apprenticeship programmes at its premises in Germiston, in November 2024.
ACTOM’s apprenticeship initiatives
LH Marthinusen, which was founded in 1913, will support Eskom’s air pre-heater infrastructure. These fans are crucial for Eskom’s power generation facilities, as they play a key role in managing airflow and regulating temperature levels.
ACTOM’s move to expand production came as South Africa was about to see large investments across a range of industrial sectors, said Naidoo.
“We at ACTOM are really starting to see this manifest in terms of tangible projects in the IPP [Independent Power Producers] space, as well as various other initiatives like the Transmission Development Plan manifesting in terms of actual projects on the ground that’s formed to deliver loading to our factories.”
ACTOM in renewable energy growth
The government announced the appointment of 8 preferred bidders for Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme in December 2024, and the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA) plans to spend R112-billion on increasing grid capacity over the next 10-years.
“We’ve seen in the media capital projects announced of the value of approximately one trillion rand spanning across all of these various different sectors,” noted Naidoo.
He saw this increased investment not only as a way to grow the economy, but also an opportunity to grow its industrial base.
“For me it is crucial that we as a country use this demand as a catalyst to unite the reindustrialisation of our country.”
He said this could be done by the localisation of product manufacturers, as well as the aftermarket support of these products.
Industrialisation and job creation with ACTOM
“This will lead ultimately to the creation of jobs that’s desperately needed in the country, but also in terms of increasing our economically active population that takes away from the social burden of the state and thereby would become a major stimulus to GDP growth.”
Naidoo said in this regard, South Africa should consider emulating China, which used its industrial sector to drive economic growth.
“The Chinese economy, when they peaked growth rates above GDP growth rates of 10% per annum, one of the key things worth noting was that manufacturing at that point in time was about 40% of their GDP.”
He said there was also an opportunity to leverage this economic potential by encouraging African countries to trade with each other.
“I think it’s important that we leverage off that demand and try to optimise what we do for Africa, by Africa, in Africa, using the resources on the continent. And on the back of that, we need to look at the African continental free trade area and free trade agreements, to use that as a means of leveraging off that demand and use that as a stimulus to grow industrialisation in the continent.”
Intercontinental trade in Africa is less than 15% of Africa’s GDP, and could be an important mechanism when it comes to stimulating industrialisation on the continent.
Naidoo noted that ACTOM was doing its bit to facilitate such trade.
ACTOM’s African Expansion Strategy
“At the moment we’ve got factories in five African countries, and in 2023 we established a business in Kenya, bought a business actually in Nairobi, that today employs about 70 people, and that’s the ACTOM industrial hub for East Africa.”
