The formation of Citect Africa
March 2002
News
Starting the New year with >R35m of new projects, ISI and Xycom SA thought they were doing well. After all, not too many South African companies in the PLC and scada field would expect to have a budget of R50m for 2002. But then they were acquired by their overseas principals CI Technologies (CIT) of Australia which is probably the largest company in the world dedicated to scada and PLC integration.
Roger Girdler, MD of Xycom, says that it is a hugely exciting prospect for the South African market place. All the staff and management of Xycom and ISI have been taken over 'lock, stock and barrel' by the overseas company and will be known as Citect Africa. It will operate from the same office block in Olivedale, but the company has had to lease a lot more space to accommodate all the additional engineers. The telephone numbers, etc will remain the same and, since all the personnel are the same as in the previous companies, they are still dedicated to give the same level of excellent service.
l to r: Roger Girdler, MD of Citect Africa, Wayne Morris, CEO, and Wilhelm Swart, Director
However, instead of having access to about 25 engineers, the company will now have access to more than 250 engineers who are skilled in PLC and scada. Girdler says that he already has four highly-skilled overseas engineers working in SA and more will follow when the work requires it.
Internally within the company it means that the local South African engineers are part of the Citect scada development team (not all of them of course). This means that SA engineers have immediate access to any of the scada code - they are now part of one big international company, which has offices in Australasia, USA, Europe, China and now Africa. "When a customer logs a support query with us it is immediately logged onto the international support database so it could just as well be answered by a support engineer from China as by a South African.
For further information, contact Roger Girdler, Citect Africa, on 011 462 6671 or visit www.citectafrica.co.za
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