The recent announcement by StatsSA indicating an uptick in manufacturing data offers the packaging industry an opportunity to ramp up the move towards digitising their production in preparation for further growth.
This is according to Bruce Peters, regional manager in charge of manufacturing at Cisco Southern Africa, reacting to figures from StatsSA showing that manufacturing production increased by 1,5% in August 2017 compared with August 2016.
Peters believes that, as the increase was mainly due to higher production in the basic iron and steel, non-ferrous metal products, metal products and machinery division (11,3% and contributing 2 percentage points), downstream manufacturers will take up this increased production and provide the packaging industry with slightly increased upstream demand.
“Meeting this demand, though, will require the packaging industry to take advantage of the window to reduce downtime by bringing their internal processes up to speed, and improving the services they offer,” Peters says.
In a Cisco survey of more than 600 senior executives in 13 countries – from both industrial machine builders and end-user manufacturers – 86% said the transition from product-centric to service-oriented revenue models is a core part of their growth strategies.
StatsSA announced that seasonally adjusted manufacturing production increased by 1,3% in the three months ended August 2017 compared with the previous three months. Six of the 10 manufacturing divisions reported positive growth rates over this period.
The largest contributions to the 1,3% increase were made by the following divisions:
* Basic iron and steel, non-ferrous metal products, metal products and machinery (2,5% and contributing 0,5 of a percentage point);
* Petroleum, chemical products, rubber and plastic products (1,6% and contributing 0,4 of a percentage point);
* Motor vehicles, parts and accessories and other transport equipment (3,9% and contributing 0,3 of a percentage point); and
* Furniture and “other” manufacturing (7,1% and contributing 0,2 of a percentage point).
“It is telling that the two top contributing divisions are strongly related to the packaging industry. Stats SA’s latest figures underscore findings in McKinsey’s research released earlier this month, which point to consumer spending in Africa reaching $2,1-trillion by 2025 in real 2015 prices. Consumer goods are, by definition, packaged, and I believe that the packaging industry can therefore expect an uptick as well,” Peters says.
The McKinsey Global Institute has identified four groups of consumers that will drive much of Africa’s consumption growth between now and 2025: those earning more than $50 000 a year in North Africa and South Africa, Nigerian consumers, middle-income consumers in East Africa, and middle-income consumers in Central and West Africa.
These figures come in the wake of recently announced investments in the African packaging market. These include AB InBev investing in two new packaging lines for returnable glass bottles, Mpact announcing a new liquid packaging recycling plant, Golden Era partnering with a Nigerian beverage can manufacturer to build a large-scale beverage can plant, and Nampak, considered Africa’s largest packaging company, investments in recent years both locally and in Angola and Nigeria.
Already in 2015, Deloitte predicted that the African continent would become “a high growth region for the packaging industry, with demand being driven by increased markets for consumer products, burgeoning individual incomes, an expanding population of youthful consumers and growing domestic economies-particularly those in East and West Africa”.
Peters warns, though, that the packaging industry will be negatively affected if it doesn’t address digital transformation to reduce downtime.
“Complexity and a lack of digital capabilities are holding firms back. The top inhibitor to transitioning to a service model is the difficulty of managing a “two-front war” – products and services simultaneously. However, their ability to capture significant value and leapfrog competitors, hinges on accelerating to a service model,” he says.
To resolve this service dilemma, the services and digital journeys must converge. “To unlock the full potential of the service model, while still improving products, industrial machine manufacturers and end-user manufacturers need to digitally transform their businesses,” Peters says.