ALAN PEAT EXPORTS OF capital equipment are growing fast, but future development is threatened by the severe skills shortage that is putting the brakes on the SA manufacturing industry achieving its inherent potential, according to Sybill Rhomberg, MD of the SA Capital Equipment Export Council (SACEEC). It’s second only to the automotive industry as the most successful exporting sector in the country, with sustained growth. Rhomberg assesses export growth at 20% globally. “That’s for most capital equipment,” she said, “but especially for mining equipment, and it’s for all export markets – from Siberia and Peru to US, Canada and Australia.” And the SACEEC handles the exports for all the industry sub-sectors – mining, agriculture, building and construction, beneficiation processing and utilities. Amongst the challenges are research and development (R&D) and tool changing, but, according to Rhomberg, it’s the severe skills shortage and training that are the real hitches in the industry. “The sector education and training authority (Seta) system just doesn’t work,” she told FTW. “So bad is it, we’ve gone back to the ancient guild system.” The problem is that there is no indenture in the industry, and apprentices make no long-term commitment to their jobs. “Companies are therefore loath to spend money on training apprentices under the Seta system when they might very well just up and leave,” said Rhomberg. In the guild system, if anyone signs an apprenticeship the companies are prepared to pay – but only because there’s a condition that the learner will repay this amount if they leave. “They are also committed to a period of usually three years with that company to repay the training costs,” said Rhomberg. “This should encourage an improved training system.” But in the interim, that serious lack of manufacturing skills remains the industry’s biggest challenge and means that it has to import the skills until the local system is rectified. “It needs the government to support a new system for the engineering field,” said Rhomberg, “NOT the Seta exercise. “But they are very well aware of the problem, and things are moving in the right direction.” Another major constraint as far as exports are concerned (especially for the smaller companies) is the lack of pre-shipment finance in SA. That’s especially true for amounts of less than R5-million, where banks and other financial institutions don’t want to underwrite them because the amounts are too small to make it worthwhile for them. “It’s this bottom end of the industry that we want to develop, and we’re looking to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to underwrite this pre-shipment finance,” said Rhomberg. “We can only grow very slowly if we don’t have the finance.”
