The completed Tugela River bridge.

Transcription

1 The completed Tugela River bridge.

2 THE NINETIES: A DECADE OF GROWTH 1992 Tugela River bridge During the 1990s the company experienced exponential growth and took on technically challenging projects, including the Tugela River bridge in 1992, the Majuba power station in 1996 and the Nchwaning Shaft No. 3 at Black Rock in the Northern Cape. Glynn Williams left the company in early 1990 and after several unsuccessful replacements Dermot Quinn joined Stefanutti & Bressan in 1992 as financial manager. Coming from a listed environment he was surprised to find a company being run by a group of engineers who felt safer test-driving new plant in the yard than test-driving the new computer equipment in the office. At the time the company owned one XT computer and the director s secretary was still using a trusty IBM typewriter to type up all correspondence and tenders. In terms of engineering the spirit of the company had always been entrepreneurial and the nineties would prove to be both ambitious and adventurous for the group. With the recruitment of John Jackson (who was faced with the same initial culture shock as Deryck White), the company now had in-house expertise in the incremental launching of bridges. When a tender was put out for the construction of a four-lane divided carriageway with two alternative bridge decks, Stefanutti & Bressan (Pty) Ltd submitted a proposal for a bold single deck with an overall width of 20.75m accommodating a four-lane undivided freeway. The Tugela Bridge project was awarded to the company and construction of the largest incrementally launched bridge in the country was completed in 1993, winning the prestigious Fulton Award in 1994 for excellence in the use of concrete. In 1994 Stefanutti & Bressan built the first concrete sugar conditioning silos in the world for Big Bend Sugar Mill in Swaziland. The cylinder is 30m in diameter and 60m high! The company also built the second concrete sugar conditioning silo in the world for Mhlume Sugar Mill in Swaziland in Dermot Quinn joins S&B 1993 Opens an office in Mozambique 1994 Builds first conditioning concrete silo in the world 1995 Garth Perry joins S&B with equity in the holding company 1996 Opens Gauteng office 1996 Majuba cooling towers 1997 Gino and family move to Johannesburg from Durban First project in Zambia 1999 Nchwaning Shaft No. 3 The Tugela River bridge prior to the first launch. A SOLID FOUNDATION STEFANUTTI & BRESSAN 29 John Jackson christens the Tugela River bridge. Pictured from left to right are John Pereira - general foreman, Mauro Stefanutti - Gino s younger brother and site engineer on the Tugela River project and Clive Reucassel - contracts manager at the time.

3 THE MOVE INTO MOZAMBIQUE In 1993 the second foray into Southern Africa occurred when Stefanutti & Bressan undertook major repairs to a group of cylindrical silos in Maputo, Mozambique. The project was in excess of US$1 million and upon completion a Mozambique office was established. Once on site 95 local people were employed and, against difficult odds, the team managed to find a place to stay; train the local workforce; find usable scaffolding in the old Maputo building yards; get all the relevant materials to site; and complete the project to the German client s satisfaction. The civil war was officially over. However, the country was still littered with landmines, materials were a commodity and resources scarce with the majority of the locals never having been exposed to any construction work due to the long civil war. The pioneering team included Martin du Rand (who had just joined Stefanutti), Louis Pereira (the only Portuguese speaker in the group), Anthony Pillay and a core team of six skilled staff members. The Mozambique office went on to work on many projects, including the BP fuel depot, MIPS container terminal Chicumbane, Maputo fishing port, Tshai Tshai (a joint venture), a sugar terminal for the Sugar Association, the Japanese Embassy, Encell offices, the EU Embassy, the rehabilitation of Ximavane and the Polano Casino. BP jetty. Rehabilitation of the MIPS terminal. First project in Mozambique - major repairs to a group of cylindrical silo s in Maputo. A SOLID FOUNDATION STEFANUTTI & BRESSAN 30

4 WORKING IN MOZAMBIQUE, AFTER THE CIVIL WAR (Source: Paulo dos Santos) 1. PURCHASING CEMENT : As soon as cement arrived at the Maputo train station word would spread. We would immediately send all available vehicles to the station where we would proceed to buy as much cement as we could load onto the vehicles. Cement was only sold for cash and auction style. 2. CRIME : Serious crime was unheard of in the early days but petty crime was rife. In order to stop our vehicles being stripped while we went to meetings, we had to employ drivers to sit inside the vehicles for the duration of our absence. However, if our mirrors or lights did go missing, we were always able to buy them back in the informal market at Chipaminga 3. LANDMINES & HAND GRENADES : An arms caché We had quite an interesting incident while we were demolishing an old building on the outskirts of Maputo where we uncovered quite a large arms caché, which consisted of a couple of large bags of hand grenades. We immediately informed the local police station who, much to our surprise, did not even bother to come to the site and verify our find. Two days later a man arrived, loaded two bags into his vehicle and left. About a week later a different man arrived and left with the balance of the grenades. We never did find out who these people were or what actually happened to the hand grenades Building our office While we were building the boundary wall for our office in Maputo we uncovered a land mine. Again, the local police were informed. They came out to the site, looked at the landmine and instructed us all to move back while they proceeded to detonate it. After informing us that it was safe to get back to work, they climbed back into their vehicle and drove off, leaving most of us with our mouths hanging wide open. Too close to home Before commencing work on the EN1 (the main road north) our client informed us that the area had been de-mined. Just to be sure we brought in an independent company to search the area who uncovered a further 56 mines in an area of approximately 100m 2!

5 Introduced by Willie Meyburgh, the wishing well concept sees a silver coin put into the first structural concrete placed on all sites. All for good luck and, to date, it has worked very well!

6 Exponential growth During the mid-90s Gino recognised that the KwaZulu- Natal construction market could not satisfy the company s expansion needs and set his sights on the bigger market of Gauteng. Through Martin du Randt he approached Willie Meyburgh to start up a civils operation in Gauteng and, in April 1996, Willie left the major listed construction group he had been working for to establish Stefanutti & Bressan Civils (Pty) Limited. The company initially operated from a humble 100m 2 of prefab offices in Kempton Park, but the promising prospects in the province would bear much fruit in the years to come. Willie brought with him a good knowledge of the market conditions in Gauteng and the adjoining provinces. He also brought a vast number of new clients with him and introduced a wishing well concept whereby it became a company tradition to place a silver coin into the first structural concrete placed on site to date a ritual that has stood the company in good stead! The first major project of the Gauteng office was to construct the Majuba cooling towers near Standerton for Eskom. Client DB Thermal awarded the contract to a Stefanutti & Bressan joint venture, valued at R149 million. At the time the project value was R50 million more than the combined group turnover of R89 million for the financial year ending February The four-year project was completed one year ahead of schedule and the company was catapulted into another dimension. Clients and competitors in the province started paying attention to the new entrant into the Gauteng market and fierce competition ensued as Stefanutti & Bressan began to muscle in amongst the bigger contractors. The pioneering group successfully priced and completed technical projects such as the Nchwaning decline shaft near Black Rock and the AAA plant for Sasol, using a precast method. A number of other projects with blue chip companies followed soon and, by the turn of the century, Stefanutti & Bressan was established and recognised as a worthy competitor in the civil construction market in Southern Africa. The Majuba cooling towers and Nchwaning decline shaft both received the Fulton Award for excellence in the use of concrete. In 1998 the company formed a three-way joint venture to build the Zambezi Smelter on the Copper Belt in Zambia. Two years later, upon completion of the project, Stefanutti & Bressan Zambia, the third Southern African office of the company, was established and has since been responsible for numerous Zambian projects from the Eastern Province down to Livingstone. A SOLID FOUNDATION STEFANUTTI & BRESSAN 33

7 The Stefanutti & Bressan offices in Kempton Park.

8 THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY It had always been part of the Stefanutti & Bressan vision to start operations on the international front. During the period 2001 to 2004 efforts were made to expand the business into the United Kingdom and Australia and, although this was not accomplished, international expansion remained on the radar screen. Whilst international efforts had proven unsuccessful, new South African operations, a piling operation (headed up by Shaun Nell) and the new Gauteng-based earthworks company spawned from the civils company in Gauteng. Expansion followed into Botswana, Zambia and Angola in The building operations became more prominent and Howard Schwegmann joined the group in KwaZulu-Natal to boost this discipline. The building boom gripping South Africa from around 2004 further motivated the opening of a Gauteng building operation in 2005 which was rapidly followed by a Cape Town operation in 2006, headed up by Peter Leppan. In 2004, due to ill health, Garth Perry, who had been with the company since 1995, stepped down and sold his shares back to the company. In 2005 the group s annual turnover had increased to R652 million and market indicators showed that positive growth lay ahead. The group, at this stage, consisted of 10 private companies, all with various degrees of shareholding by management. (Part of Stefanutti & Bressan s success and growth was due to the principle of giving equity to management whenever a new company was established.) In order to raise capital for further growth, other than by means of internal funding, listing on the JSE was a serious consideration Establishment of an office in Angola 2003 Forms piling and geotechnical division as part of the civil structures operation 2005 Restructuring of group 2005 Incorporation of earthworks company into the group 2005 Opening of Gauteng building operations 2006 Opening of Cape Town building operations 2006 Acquisition of ECMP 2007 JSE listing 2007 Acquisition of Skelton & Plummer 2007 Acquisition of Civil & Coastal In 2003 S&B established a piling division, mainly operating in the Durban and coastal areas. In 2005 an independent piling company was established and funds were made available for the purchase of modern equipment. The new company soon secured two significant contracts, PFG Glass Factory in Springs and IFAFI Marina at Hartebeespoort Dam. The company, now named Geotechnical & Piling to reflect its multi-disciplinary capacity, operates in piling, lateral support, open-cut mining and dolomitic grouting fields Acquisition of Stocks Limited for R1.1 billion A SOLID FOUNDATION STEFANUTTI & BRESSAN 35

9 In 2000 the largest waterproofing project in South Africa was put out to tender for Melrose Arch (pictured above). The brief was for a product of the highest standards and durability irrespective of costs. Stefanutti & Bressan were invited to submit their proposal. After much to-ing and fro-ing the client was still in two minds about the merits of the product versus the cost and called a meeting to discuss the S&B proposal. The client raised concerns with regards to the fact that the proposal submitted by S&B was a first, not only in the country, but also for S&B, to which Gino replied: You are correct. But we had previously never built cooling towers for a power station before; we had never built a refinery blast proof control room before or launched a double-deck incrementally launched concrete bridge - and we did all three first time and on budget, finishing well before the deadline AND went on to win the Fulton Awards for all three! Three days later the contract was awarded to Stefanutti & Bressan.

10 Up until 2004 the group had grown amorphously by uniting certain common shareholdings with new management skills and forming new companies. The directors of the group realised that, in order to meet their long-term objectives, the group would have to be restructured into a formal group structure. This process was completed by Dermot in October 2005 as a pre-requisite to the listing and, in February 2006, the first consolidated results were presented, reflecting a group turnover of over R1 billion. In late 2005 a BEE deal was entered into with partner Mowana Investments acquiring 11.3% in the group. Following a very long internal process and much soul searching, Stefanutti & Bressan entered into discussions with ECMP in early The transaction with the civil engineering company (specialising in the design, construction and maintenance of tailings dams and open pit contract mining for the mining groups), was concluded in early In August 2007, after 34 memorable years and four months of intense work and negotiation as a private company, Stefanutti & Bressan listed on the JSE. Over the last three decades company growth had been via organic means and growth by means of acquisitions now presented a new and challenging concept to shareholders. To afford employees the opportunity to also own a piece of Stefanutti & Bressan, an employee share trust was established, using some of the shares that Garth Perry had sold back to the company on his departure in In 2003 the Southern African potential was again explored and Angola was earmarked for expansion. The first project was a Grant Aid project by the government of Japan for the state-owned Josina Machel Hospital. The neglected hospital was restored, refurbished and turned into a fully operational hospital with modern facilities. Upon completion of this project the Angolan office went on to build a shopping centre and a R300 million oil tank project for Algoa Oil and Son-Angol. A SOLID FOUNDATION STEFANUTTI & BRESSAN 37

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12 Stefanutti & Bressan Holdings Limited Share Code: SFB Short name: S&B

13 A LISTED COMPANY By the time of its listing the group almost covered the full spectrum of civil engineering and building contracting. Two further acquisitions followed in 2007 a controlling interest in Skelton & Plummer, a mechanical and electrical engineering company and a controlling stake in Civil & Coastal, civil & marine specialists. The acquisition of Civil & Coastal afforded the group entry into the marine works market, as well as an opportunity to increase the group s footprint in the Western Cape and Angola. Post listing, Schalk Ackermann and six other directors joined the civil company in Gauteng to boost operations. However, with the construction market increasingly buoyant, skills at all levels were at a premium. When it became known that that international construction group Stocks Limited was planning entry into the listed environment, negotiations were entered into whereby it was proposed that Stocks joined the Stefanutti group. A few days before Christmas in 2007, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from the terrace of the Radisson Hotel in Cape Town, Gino Stefanutti, Willie Meyburgh and Dermot Quinn from Stefanutti and Stephen Pell, Rob King and Willie Erasmus from Stocks agreed that there was indeed synergy and merit for Stocks to join the Stefanutti group of companies. The transaction was concluded on 23 July A SOLID FOUNDATION STEFANUTTI & BRESSAN 40

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