South Africa Master Distributor: India & Malaysia Top Suppliers in Price-Dominated Market
FEATURE
Rob Simes, managing director of Johannesburg, South Africa-based UPL Socket Screws
BoltFast employee filling an order
“Price, price and price,” master distributor Rob Simes described the key to the South African fastener market.
Simes, managing director of Johannesburg, South Africa-based UPL Socket Screws (Pty) Ltd., and his brother, Richard Simes, are second generation in the fastener industry. Their father, Edward Simes, spent a career in the fastener industry and in finding niche markets.
Today the UPL Group supplies fasteners to a variety of distributors in South Africa.
The recession that most of the world felt in 2008 also struck South Africa. “It has been a tough market. By the end of 2010 we were in recovery, but not back to what we had in 2007.”
Development of UPL Group goes back to 1929 when Gordon Webster founded Gordon Webster & Company (PTY) Ltd. as a distributorship for various fixtures and fittings.
Unbrako bought the Webster company in 1966 and changed its name to Unbrako (Pty) Ltd.
In 1985 some university-based owners from the U.S. protested the Unbrako ownership of an African company during apartheid.
In 1986 Edward Simes bought the company from Unbrako and changed the name to UPL – an abbreviation of its previous name, Unbrako Propriety Limited.
The second-generation brothers each started in warehouse jobs and since their father retired in 2009 they now share management duties at the headquarters in a business/industrial park in suburban Johannesburg. ©2011 GlobalFastenerNews.com
• Subscribers may read the full UPL story from the FIN interview with Rob Simes by clicking here.
• Nonsubscribers may purchase the full Africa fasteners article by clicking on Article Store.
• Coming Friday will be a FIN interview with distributor Daneel Herselman, general manager of BoltFast.
Click gallery on right to see photos of the three fastener companies in Africa.
Related Stories:
• South African Fastener Manufacturer: Competing With Imports
There are no comments at the moment, do you want to add one?
Write a comment