Boksburg-based bearings, seals and lubrication systems company SKF Southern Africa has appointed Burak Özyurt as its new MD, with immediate effect.

After working for Turkish household appliances company Arcelik (known locally as Defy), he joined SKF in 2012 as an application engineer in Turkey and worked in various roles.

Özyurt was later appointed sales and engineering director of SKF Turkey and, after three years, attained the position of SKF Distribution Development Central and East Europe, Middle East and Africa manager.

His vision is to create a unique and highly-efficient customer-focused organisation, and Özyurt aims to deploy the SKF Rotational Equipment Performance model throughout all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Under this capital expenditure-tight environment, Özyurt will be focusing on performance management contracts for all customers in Southern Africa, to help them reduce operational and capital expenditure.