One of the leading South African systems integrators, Hiprom, has taken a further lead over its competition with the completion of a BEE deal which sees Magumo Investments taking a 26% stake in the company.
Magumo Investments is headed up by chairman Terry Rosenberg with Ditabe Chocho holding the position of CEO. A number of highly experienced players make up the balance of the Magumo executive team. Magumo is highly focused and only targets companies where it believes that an active empowerment partner can make a sustainable difference, to the business, its employees and its customers. To this end Magumo intend to become fully involved with the operations of Hiprom and Chocho, already a director of the company, will join the latter's financial team from the end of February.
Another executive director of Magumo, Hugh Page, who has extensive experience in sales and marketing, has been a full time employee of Hiprom since February last year when the deal was effectively signed. Hiprom is now a fully empowered business in terms of South African legislation. Magumo believes that its investment in Hiprom is a very sound one, as it is a profitable, cash-generating company with good growth potential as an active shareholder which is one of Magumo's selection criteria.
Hiprom, an ISO 9000 certified company, was established in 1997 and employs a staff of some 75 people split between its offices in Johannesburg and Rustenburg. There are 16 qualified graduate engineers, nine higher national diplomats and together with a large number of technical staff this represents a formidable team in the world of industrial software. Hiprom prides itself on delivering high quality software every time a project is executed and the use of a CASE tool to encapsulate all the experience of the company in their software. From a small start with four engineers the company has grown to provide the local control industry (mainly mining, metals and power industry) with a world class electrical and automation systems integrator (SI).
Hiprom prides itself on the consistent delivery of good engineering solutions and long term commitment to its customers. This, together with the focus and experience in industry has seen strong growth in the company and its customer base over the last decade. The managing director is Hein Hiestermann, who himself is one of the four entrepreneurs (the others being Stephen Proctor, Craig Moyes and Fritz Hiestermann) who founded the company. All the other founders remain as directors and they will be joined by Chocho who has also been appointed to the board. Also on the board of directors are Lefty Du Toit, who is the Rustenburg branch manager and Graham Stead Pr Eng, responsible for electrical and design projects.
The technical capabilities of Hiprom are comprehensive, as the following list illustrates:
* Consulting services for CBE phases.
* EPCM consulting.
* Control philosophy development.
* Functional specification, drawings and equipment specifications.
* Detail design of electrical and instrumentation systems including the installation documentation.
* MCC and panel design.
* Control system design including networks.
* PLC and scada software standards design.
* PLC and scada software development.
* Complete system tests including I/O simulation.
* Commissioning and handover.
* Project-specific training (for engineering and operational staff).
Hiprom uses an in-house computer aided software engineering (CASE) tool HSLogix, to generate all software and documentation. Automatic generation of the bulk of the PLC and scada software (90% plus all code and all PLC and scada database tags) results in fast, efficient and error free software every time.
Besides this comprehensive total offering, Hiprom can provide unique solutions such as the GPS anti-collision and tracking solutions for surface trains as implemented by Hiprom on various sites over the last five years.
As part of the engineering team Hiprom has established a strong electrical engineering group that is involved in the design and implementation of reticulation systems and HV switchboards up to 33 kV. Another centre of excellence is the turbo machinery division concentrating on the turnkey delivery of electrical and control systems of large compressors and blowers. Hiprom has, through an outsource agreement with Siemens Power (Formerly Turborep DEMAG Delaval), implemented control systems in many large air compressors in southern Africa.
With Magumo as a partner, Hiprom is looking forward to further growth in a competitive market. Magumo itself believes that it can really add value and views Hiprom as having a very competent staff complement. As pointed out in a previous article in SA I&C, empowerment has its upside and the Magumo/Hiprom joint venture should illustrate the value of such cooperation to the non-believers.
Dr Maurice McDowell has many years' experience as a technical journalist, editor, business manager and research scientist. His third party analyses of world-class companies and processes, as well as his insight into industry and technology trends are well respected.
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