New memorandums of agreement to drive SA's manufacturing export

These MoAs form part of the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) National Industrial Participation Programme (NIPP). The programme seeks to leverage economic benefits and support the development of the South African industry by effectively utilising the instrument of government procurement.

The overall objective of the MoAs is to contribute to the local manufacturing industry’s export growth, based on internationally competitive products, by improving the industry and the CSIR’s product development capabilities. These capabilities can be used to develop new world-class products and to improve existing products for export. The CSIR aims to support the development of small, medium and micro enterprises as component suppliers to share in the economic benefits of participating in the manufacturing value chain and also contributing to Black Economic Empowerment in the country.

"Our mission is to create business success through engineering technology and we are passionate about what we do. I’m excited that we can be involved through the CSIR in growing businesses of the future that will enable economic upliftment at the same time address the severe shortage of engineering skills in our country", emphasised Ryan Earle, ESTEQ ndustry Solutions director.

The CSIR wishes to, through these MoAs, continuously establish, improve, and grow specialised product development capabilities in South Africa by enabling and supporting Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. The MoAs also aim to create integration platforms across multi-tiered advanced industries, in the form of PLM, multi-enterprise concurrent engineering methodologies, and engineering design integration capabilities spanning engineering disciplines in the product architecture in answer to the latest Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) of the DTI.