Electricity and Control May 2025

Automation is rapidly emerging as a catalyst for industrial transformation, enabling businesses to meet sustainability targets, enhance productivity and drive economic e iciency. 2025 – a year for growth, despite industry challenges Adrian van Wyk, Managing Director of Referro Systems Control systems + automation

O ver the past year and, in particular, the first quarter of 2025, the importance of partnerships has been evident and key to navigating strategic growth and technological innovation for many companies in our field. This has allowed for collaboration in areas such as complex legacy migration projects, executing high horsepower drive retrofits and meeting increasingly complex market demands, ensuring our customers maintain their competitive edge.

develop plans around their inputs and when, where and how these inputs need to applied. In the mining sector, the industry remains relatively stable, though not without its operational challenges. Companies are increasingly prioritising improved maintainability, enhanced sustainability, work force optimisation, and strategic cost management to drive e”iciency to ensure long-term growth and competitiveness in the global market. An emerging industry trend here is a greater focus on machine safety equipment. This reflects the growing organisational imperative to prevent operational stoppages, reduce production interruptions and maintain consistent operational capacity, mitigating potential production delays. New technology Although over the past year the conversation was dominated by ar tificial intelligence, we expect to see the idea of human-robot collab oration gaining traction in the year ahead. The rise of Industry 5.0 is further spurring innovative solutions. In automation and control, there is constant growth, learning and change. We expect to see investments therefore going into the ex pansion of product pipelines. Looking forward, we will be rolling out more powerful variable speed drives, enabling us to serve customers with higher voltages and power requirements. We expect to see this requirement across many industries – the need for higher voltage, higher power, higher performance products. There are also interesting movements in the field of low-complexity products such as push buttons, contactors, motor protection devices and circuit breakers. A notable push is under way to deliver Ethernet IP capabilities into the low-end motor control space. This advance promises to provide customers with enhanced safe ty and visibility into production line operations, ensuring systems run

Adrian van Wyk, Referro Systems.

Expectations are likely to shiŽ significantly in the coming months, with a substantial swing anticipated in a number of critical industries in South Africa where automation and in strumentation will play an essential role in meeting very com petitive market demands. Expected changes in industry With a shiŽ in the agricultural space expected to come to the fore, automation and instrumentation will play a significant role in this critical industry. Following from a five-year drought, the expectation is that this year will deliver bumper crops across all agricultural prod ucts, including grapes, sultanas, nuts, olives and others. This will place pressure on the infrastructure of producers, as they will need to be ready to handle higher yields or risk spoiling the potential of their crops. Automation becomes a valuable tool to help producers

In the sectors it serves, Referro expects to see a growing shi• towards advanced automation and instrumentation as industries seek to meet demand in highly competitive markets.

MAY 2025 Electricity + Control

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