Local manufacturer and mineral processing expert Multotec will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in April 2023. Multotec Group CEO Thomas Holtz says the company’s success over half a century cannot be specifically attributed to one single person, instead pointing out that teamwork is the secret to its success.

“I do not think it is one individual, I think our strength lies in being a strong team and a collective commitment [to business success]. I believe that Multotec rode through Covid, for example, extremely successfully, partly because of the strong team culture,” he says.

This culture can be traced back to the company’s roots, when Multotec’s founders imported German-made screens into South Africa. This quickly evolved to the company manufacturing its own products, where it developed and redesigned the screens for South Africa’s mining industry. Multotec diversified its product range over the years, which today includes screening media, mill and scrubber linings, mineral processing equipment, solid and liquid separation, sampling solutions, conveyor system solutions, wear solutions and armour protection products.

“We have quite a wide portfolio of products that we can offer to almost any mineral processing application – whether that’s diamonds, coal, platinum, copper or iron-ore we will have equipment that is of a consumable or capital nature to supply the mineral processing sector,” notes Holtz.

Multotec is active across the world and has an installed base in over 100 countries. Through its global presence, it delivers local expertise, with engineered solutions and services tailored to the unique mineral processing requirements of each region. 

“Multotec is strongly committed to the manufacturing sector through local investment in the countries in which we operate. We’ve developed our own technology and built factories requiring a range of skills, including metallurgists, drafts people and a sales team, among others.

“We prioritise understanding a client’s application and then developing the technologies to suit that application. We are not simply a catalogue sales company - we tend to get right into the mineral processing operation to recognise the needs and the problems of our clients. And from that, we then have to design and manufacture the product ourselves,” he explains.

The company employs close on 2 000 people globally, with 1 500 in South Africa, across various manufacturing locations in Gauteng, including Pretoria North and Spartan, in Kempton Park. Global manufacturing facilities include China, Chile, Brazil and Australia, which enables Multotec to stay close to its market and be able to easily customise products according to geographic location and client preferences, and develop the technology for the local environment.

“We’ve become quite a strong player in Australia. We are now one of the top three screen suppliers in the mining industry in Australia,” Holtz states proudly.

He acknowledges that the lessons learned from South Africa’s black-economic empowerment model have stood the company in good stead when facilitating manufacturing hubs in developing economies such as  Botswana, Ghana and Zambia. 

“The socio-economic environment in developing countries often means the infrastructure is simply not available yet, so you end up doing a lot more in those regions. You cannot necessarily subcontract the work, because subcontractors are not available, or the capabilities are not there. 

“We’ll set up a branch – for example in Tete, in Mozambique – where we will work with local communities. We employ many local people, we upskill them and we encourage the community to be a stakeholder in the environment in which we operate. We’re actively involved in the communities thanks to the enterprise development model we’ve learned in South Africa.”

Holtz believes Multotec’s strength lies not only in its wide portfolio of products, but also its wide portfolio of clients. Whether that’s gold, coal, platinum or iron-ore, Multotec is able to provide mineral processing applications across a range of sectors and industries.

Multotec’s brand is well-known as a mineral processing expert and its product managers understand these various applications and equipment and they are recognised all over the world as specialists in their field, offering technical support and advice in most applications.

The company prides itself on its innovative training programmes for employees and customers in metallurgy, where webinars offer new employees and young graduates on the mines the opportunity to bridge the gap between the theory learned in academic institutions and the real-world applications in the process plant.

These training programmes were accelerated during the Covid pandemic and are offered online and free of charge for a global audience.

“If through these training programmes we can help our clients process their product more efficiently, their costs are reduced and that is an optimisation process that we are excited to engage with them on,” clarifies Holtz.

Coming back to the company’s fiftieth anniversary, Holtz says he is looking forward to embracing the next half century, with a focus on how Multotec will evolve as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and artificial intelligence (AI) take centre stage.

“We need to have the conversation around where the human being fits into the industrial ecosystem of 4IR and AI. These technologies can be tools, but at the core of a business, it’s all about the human being, it’s the people that make things happen through how they connect and relate to each other,” he says.

Multotec will continue to focus on building strong relationships and connections, and drive the company culture into the future as it aspires to multinational status into the next five decades.