Capital Equipment News August 2015

Buses take shape inside the production facility.

The Scania SG280 genset installed at Busco’s manufacturing facility.

WHEN TIME IS MONEY you need power at hand Photos and article: Richard Jansen van Vuuren

As a direct customer of Eskom, who can no longer guarantee an uninterrupted supply of electricity, a bus-manufacturer whose entire operation is reliant on it has made a decision to put power back under its own control.

T he manufacturing sector is showing a decline of 28 % for the current quarter and Willie van Zyl, managing member of Busco Marketing, is not surprised. “In addition to the problems associated with load-shedding – combined with more-frequent unscheduled power interruptions – we can no longer afford to have our production line stand- ing idle during power outages,” he explains.

fact, we are seeing smaller profit margins at this time than we were in 1974. With this in mind, Busco has always ensured it runs on a tightly-monitored system to reduce opera- tional cost as far as possible. But even with a lean budget such as ours, if our produc- tion line stands idle it costs the company up- wards of R30 000 per hour. For this reason we made a decision to purchase a Scania SG280 genset,” he points out.

team, and production of roughly 70 staff this cost, which cannot be recuperated as it is based on time lost, is devastating. Busco Marketing has been operating for 19 years with members of the management team having been involved in the sector prior to establishing the company. It works closely with several bus chassis manufac- turers to address the need for uniquely de- signed and developed bus bodywork to meet the standards of the ever changing needs of bus operators and their passengers.

“Local bus manufacturers are running on extremely low margins at the moment. In

For a company that has a management team of six people, a small administrative

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