Plastics company benefits from Transnet contracts

©Ralf Neumann via 123RF

The speciality plastics company has received several orders from two of the four companies that were awarded the main locomotive-supply contracts as well as several more from sub-contractors that are supplying the chief contractors. The contracts were required to have local content, skills development and training commitments to ensure that South Africa’s engineering sector experienced the tangible benefits of the R50bn rolling stock supply contracts for 1,064 locomotives.

Several of the contracts required VescoPlastics to develop new products using its high-wear, no-lubrication-required proprietary thermoplastic, although some of the orders were for stock items that the company has been supplying the global railway industry with for more than 30 years.

The products that have been ordered include guide springs, slide rails, and coupler guides. The large orders typically involved a first phase of small numbers of components for trial and a subsequent larger order which was followed by an even larger order.

VescoPlastics supplies its rail components, including bogie, pedestal, and bogie-cup liners, to operators and repairers of passenger and freight railways in Africa, South America, Asia and Australia.

The company has warehouses in South Africa, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand, with stocking distributors in Argentina, Australia and Singapore.