Modern Mining July 2025

MINING NEWS ENERGY

SEW-Eurodrive rolls out plans, investment in its African strategy It has been another exciting year for SEW-EURODRIVE South Africa with its ‘African Strategy’ moving steadily towards fulfilment and the company’s technical capability growing by the day.

A ccording to Raymond Obermeyer, Managing Director at SEW-EURODRIVE South Africa, the times are not without their challenges – including geopolitical instability continuing to disrupt supply chains. However, this has not slowed down the business’s operations nor dampened its ambitions, says Obermeyer. “Being part of a global group gives us the flexibility to adapt our sourcing strategies, and that has been, and still is, a significant advantage for us and our customer base,” he explains. “Our stockholding remains strong and reliable, allowing us to easily meet the large orders we won in the past year.” He highlights that SEW-EURODRIVE South Africa serves multiple markets – from mining and automotive to food and beverages manufacturing, processing and packaging – many of which are flourishing while others are more cyclical. “Importantly, we continue to pursue our African Strategy,” he says, “and have steadily opened up more direct involvement in many countries including Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania and Morocco. This is in addition to our cross-border markets further

south like Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.” This expansion into the continent is driven by a long term plan looking ahead to 2030, and he emphasises that the progress to date has been built on meticulous planning. These ambitious plans include a considerable investment in a second phase of the company’s headquarters, service centre, training academy and warehouse in Aeroton near Johannesburg. Construction on this expansion began in November 2024, and the facility will be operational by the end of 2025, so that its activities can hit the ground running in 2026. This will further support the company’s expansion of its sales, support, engineering and training capabilities. Appointments of key staff for the facility are already being made, and 20 to 30 more people are likely to be put in place over the course of this year. “The critical challenge facing the users of industrial gearboxes in local markets is the level of support being provided for the products being sold,” he argues. “As we work towards being the market leader in Africa, this is squarely where our focus lies – being able to service and repair

Raymond Obermeyer, Managing Director of SEW-EURODRIVE.

28  MODERN MINING  www.modernminingmagazine.co.za | JULY 2025