For most South Africans, 2016 got off to a rocky start and many, including myself, believed that things would deteriorate even further. At the beginning of January, global stock markets plummeted in a paranoid reaction to the slowdown in the Chinese economy. As a result, commodity prices collapsed with the price of crude oil dropping to below $30 per barrel; while copper and iron ore prices plumbed new lows in sympathy. This had a profound effect on some of South Africa’s most established mining houses, which resulted in many new projects being scrapped as companies scrambled to reorganise their operations. Locally, the ‘Three Finance Ministers in Four Days’ affair sent the Rand into free-fall, with the currency reaching R16.84 to the dollar in late January – and then there was Brexit.
However, despite all of the negativity around during the first quarter, things did not in fact get worse; they got better. There are still problems, but it seems as if we the people rallied together and said enough is enough, and mostly, the country is better off because of it.
Here at SA Instrumentation and Control, it has been a busy 12 months with many exciting developments and even a new publication. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) burst onto the scene amidst the blare of marketing trumpets, with tag lines like ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ catching many a seasoned industrialist by surprise. To cut through all this hyperbole, we introduced a new industry guide that received compliments from many of our international peers.
At the SAIMC, Oratile Sematle in his first year as president took the Society a step closer to its goal of having automation inaugurated as the tenth official engineering discipline, as recognised by ECSA (more from Oratile in 'From the President's desk').
In amongst it all, product manager Jane van der Spuy put her formidable organisational skills to good use as a member of the team that brought the EtherCAT Technology Group back to South Africa. This highly popular series of breakfast seminars, sponsored by SA Power and Beckhoff Automation, attracted over 350 automation professionals from around the country to venues in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban (see the report in 'Ethernet on the fly is just faster').
In closure for this year, we wish all our readers and advertisers a happy and restful holiday break. Come back refreshed and ready for the challenges of 2017.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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