By Ajong Mbapndah L
For the NEUMAN&ESSER GROUP, it is not business as usual when it comes to Africa. The German company with a two hundred history year has taken Africa by storm carving a strong and growing niche for itself with a unique blend of services and products that make it stand out of the park.
“Our vision is to treat our customers in Africa not just as customers, but as partners. We do offer the know-how of almost two hundred years of business experience, providing superior products and services combined with the willingness to develop local capabilities in Africa. This means our partners are benefiting from our know-how exchange and development program and the way we make our high-quality level affordable by making that close and local,” says Dr. Jiří Rus, Sales Director for Africa at the NEUMAN & ESSER GROUP.
Fielding questions from PAV, Dr. Jiří Rus harps on the success of its partnership with the South African based company ROTAMECH. Building on the success of the partnership with ROTAMECH, the NEUMAN&ESSER GROUP is expanding its footprints in Africa with a broad range of programs and partnerships.
How has the first quarter of the year played out for NEUMAN & ESSER GROUP operations in Africa?
I believe the year 2024 started as the previous year ended – we are very busy with most of our new setups, and we see the confirmation of the demand for our services. I believe that customers and the market in general appreciate the fact that we “live our values” and we really work intensely on increasing our local presence and capabilities. Thus, we can be very satisfied with the first quarter.
How satisfied are you with the outcome of your partnership or operations with ROTAMECH?
ROTAMECH is and will all the time have a special place in my business heart. This was our first partner with which we started the execution of our Africa Strategy and here we also the most developed capabilities in this set up. Our business partner did a great job and has developed themselves withing just two and half years very much. But it does not come for free. Their specialists and Field Service Supervisors and Technicians participated on our training sessions organized in Germany; they show an excellent motivation and drive to go ahead with our advice, following leads and they also are making a great progress on the market itself. So, we are very satisfied, and I hope our colleagues at ROTAMECH can confirm the same. And I believe that the most benefiting will be our customers in South Africa
What does the success of the ROTAMECH partnership mean for NEUMAN & ESSER GROUP and the future of your projects in Africa?
Their success is our success and very important for us. This is the confirmation for us that the Africa Strategy and the Local Content Concept we created makes sense and is welcomed and well applicable in Africa. Looking back over the last two years I need also to confirm that it was a kind of learning path for us at the NEA GROUP to understand what really needs to be done to turn our vision into reality. Important is that we successfully proved the concept, we are already rolling it out in several countries in Africa and we are adding more and more African countries into our business focus.
Any updates on progress with regards to the service center in Nigeria?
We already started with the establishment of similar workshop like in South Africa also with our Nigerian business partner – MILAT NIGERIA Ltd. Their FSR specialists are coming just now in April for the training to our facility in Germany. So, I believe that till the end of this year, we should have the same there.
How affordable are the services and products of NEUMAN & ESSER GROUP in Africa?
When having our local set up, I cannot really understand this question. We are local. This means, I believe we are offering the true German quality on spare parts and local support on the maintenance and services (still providing that on the OEM standards). Such a combination is making the complete package from us very affordable.
When speaking about the Primary business (sales of new compressor systems) it is all the time the question, what end-user wants to receive. If quality, reliability, operational perfection, and safety plays an important role, then we are definitely the company to discuss with. Moreover, providing our local after-market services makes our offer comprehensive and interesting.
We also saw a knowledge sharing and capacity building partnership with Société Africaine de Raffinage (SAR) can you shed light on it for us?
Thank you very much for this question. This was an interesting initiative. We learnt during the technical meeting that SAR is facing some difficulties with their equipment. We proposed as the very first step to organize a technical remote training with and for their team. The training was composed of the theoretical design training of the equipment combined later with the aftermarket experience exchange, sharing proven methods, practices and procedures for maintenance and troubleshooting. Based on the feedback we received it was well appreciated and I would like to follow this pilot initiative with SAR team later this April in Cape Town during the ARDA Week.
What do African companies stand to gain from such training that NEUMAN & ESSER offers and how affordable are there?
Such trainings we organize for end users are beneficial for both – users of existing equipment and the future operators of new equipment.
We focus on sharing our knowledge on technical design bases, which are often underestimated. However, we believe that it is important to understand those, because than the operator see the consequences that can happen in case of incorrect operation or maintenance. After that, we focus on showing the newest design developments of such an equipment to show the state-of-the-art solution. Finally, we share also the methods and procedures for the maintenance as it is these days best practice.
It is beneficial for users of existing equipment (usually well aged) that they can see, what is possible to achieve with modernized compressors. Btw, modernization and revamping is a specific segment we are very active in and is a great opportunity for end users to improve efficiency, safety, environmental footprint and availability of their machines.
The future users of the equipment benefit from such a training a good base knowledge and can start with the best practice maintenance from the beginning.
And of course, during such a training, people get to know our specialists, who are all the time happy to assist with advice, help and solutions. This is our DNA.
What makes the services of NEA GROUP different or stand out, why should African countries and companies consider partnership with you over others?
Moreover, we started also with the cross-border cooperation of our business partners in Africa. I strongly believe that Africa needs to intensify its intra-continental cooperation and not to look all the time “overseas”. As the first initiative we organize in May this year the first “Africa Agents Sales Meeting” in South Africa. It will be hosted by our partner ROTAMECH and we will have 4 days of very packed and intense program to share new developments, to share experiences also inside of Africa and to make some hands-on training also in the workshop. This should inspire our partners for the next development.
What are some future engagements and projects that NEUMAN & ESSER will be working on or participating in for the rest of 2024?
We do not slow down. We are going to have again one more pretty exciting year. I of course cannot disclose details of the deals itself, but I can share with you that we do see a high chance to be awarded for several projects in Primary Segment (new compressor systems) being it in renewable segment, LNG, offshore or chemical industry segment. Moreover, we will finalize one very big revamping project, which I will happily share more information after the end. We do also foresee several further revamping projects and I believe that we will also improve our aftermarket support in some other countries.
We aim to extend our local presence in at least 3-4 more countries again and support our activities by an intensive exhibition – conference program. We have participated already EGYPES in Egypt. We are going to be in NIEC in Namibia, ARDA Week in Cape Town, MSGBC in Senegal, NOG in Nigeria and many others.
But what we do want to intensify is our development program and activity. We already spoke about the training at SAR. We are going to have in two weeks a training about electrolyzer technology in South Africa and many of similar activities will come. We want to make small “one customer-one topic” training sessions as well as larger group and industry segments focused training too. Let me and our team work on that and we can have more detailed discussion about this next time. I am all the time very happy, when I can share our news, development and ambitions in and for Africa.
*Culled From April Issue of PAV Magazine
