Company transforming S Africa’s industrial landscape

Built from a startup, industrial solutions provider BT Industrial – a new-generation, black-owned, high-energy business driven by innovation, international standards and service excellence – is transforming the industrial landscape in South Africa.

As a manufacturer of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes, the company conforms to the local content requirement of Mining Charter III, which means that every R1 spend translates into a R1.28 broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) benefit for its mining clients.

“Our clients cite this as being crucial for their own BBBEE scores,” BT Industrial founder and MD Kgomotso Lekola comments.

BT Industrial recently received a prestigious CEO Circle Entrepreneurs 2019 Award.

The company was selected as one of seven medium-sized black-owned and -managed businesses, from an initial tally of 140 companies, to be transformed into national champions over the next five years.

The seven businesses selected currently have total revenues between R50-million and R100-million, and will be nurtured over the next five years so that this increases to more than R500-million.

Not only does BT Industrial manufacture its HDPE pipes to the highest standards, but its high-capacity plant in Roodekop, Germiston, in Gauteng, also allows it to achieve unmatched production efficiencies. As a result, it can offer superior price performance to its customers, which gives it a major competitive edge in the industry.

In terms of its record, BT Industrial has executed a number of critical mining and infrastructure piping projects, and, in all cases, it has outperformed expectations. BT Industrial is ISO 9001-accredited and is one of the very few manufacturers with SABS accreditation.

It supplies HDPE pipes to the mining and oil and gas industries, power stations, process plants and telecoms companies. Applications include freshwater and wastewater conveyance, water and chemicals used in industrial processes, petroleum products, and even fibre-optic ducting.

Ancillary services include HDPE pipe design, installation and commissioning, quantity surveying and project management for the mining industry, engineering project management, and also the import and export of polymers, specialised machinery and chemicals.

With innovation as its key driver, BT Industrial has developed an array of proprietary technologies in collaboration with top universities in the field of engineering.

Its proprietary developments in piping systems and solutions include a unique solution to manage the problem of corrosion at pipe supports in process plants, statistically the most common cause of external piping failure due to corrosion.

“Our solution allows plants to maximise their hours of operation, while carrying out critical inspection and maintenance of corroded carbon steel pipes,” Lekola highlights.

These are common components of steel-frame structures at most plants, where pipes are required to be supported on metal I-beams.

Apart from product and technology innovations, BT Industrial has also invested significantly in a sophisticated enterprise resource planning system that will make it easier to scale up its operations for future expansion.