Festo at WorldSkills 2011

January 2012 News

Festo, a founding partner of the WorldSkills competition, supplied equipment comprising a Robotino, gyroscope, inductive sensor and a forklift to all teams competing in the 2011 challenge. Festo South Africa supported four young local talents who attended the event in London from 5-8 October.

Tremaine Ferreira and Allan van den Berg from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), and Tulani Mzayidume and Kumbulani Sigenu from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) faced a strong field from 50 countries in 46 skills areas. The NMMU team entered the Mobile Robotics competition and earned 10th place overall. This competition was won by Korea, followed by Japan and Indonesia. The CPUT team competed in the Mechatronics competition, in which Japan and Brazil both won gold and Sweden and Korea each earned a bronze medal.

“Festo South Africa is proud of the commitment and dedication shown by the youngsters. We believe that they learned a lot from attending and competing, and that these skills will stand them in good stead in future. It will also add to the local knowledge base in this exciting field,” said Horst Weinert, manager, Festo Didactic, South Africa.

The best performing Festo team was the German trainees, Christian Schweizer and Tobias Dietrich, who finished in seventh place overall just 32 points behind the winners in the Mechatronics competition, Japan.

For more information contact Tracey Swart, Festo, +27 (0)11 971 5560, [email protected], www.festo.co.za

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