Following on cultural changes seen in society in recent years, machine industry company Bonfiglioli South Africa is celebrating both the smaller and larger things in life as it opens its modernised office and warehouse doors, in Johannesburg, to its newly announced partnership with private company KDI Holdings.

After nearly two years of due diligence and discussions, Bonfiglioli and KDI Holdings’ partnership will unlock synergies between the two businesses that will “engineer dreams” benefiting local economies in South Africa, and cross border.

“We believe that there are a lot of synergies that Bonfiglioli and KDI Holdings share, and this was ultimately the main focus for us. Bonfiglioli is a builder, and to partner with KDI Holdings was just a natural marriage between the two companies,” says Bonfiglioli MD Dr Henco du Plooy.

With the strategic side of the partnership due to start following the announcement, Du Plooy says the partnership will see Bonfiglioli enter new sectors in the market that it is not currently active in.

“With Kuseni [Dlamini]’s guidance, we will be understanding these new markets better and will have a better approach, such as how to target those sectors with our existing product range so that it leads to capital investment,” Du Plooy says, adding that the company will also be exploring new product ranges to increase the company’s value proposition.

Dlamini is chairperson of KDI Holdings, which now holds 25% of Bonfiglioli, and says that the strategic partnership between the two companies is “underpinned by value and a very strong executive team”.

“KDI also has its own expertise in its own industry relationships that it brings to the partnership, and the synergies between KDI and Bonfiglioli is exciting in the sense that we can now discover how to unlock these synergies and create value to grow the business to service the customers, while also contributing to South Africa’s growth and prosperity.”

Dlamini is confident in the companies’ shared values, and strongly believes that the products that Bonfiglioli South Africa has are critical.

“They underpin production processes across all industries. As a person passionate about South Africa and manufacturing, I believe we should double down in terms of resuscitating our manufacturing capacities in South Africa,” he says, noting that the partnership will help to achieve this.

“We’ve gone through a process of de-industrialisation in this country, which unfortunately is not good for our long-term economic growth prospects. We’ve just come out of Covid, which saw the disruption of global supply chains. Increasingly, countries that have been sustainable post-Covid are those that are able to produce locally and also build capacities locally, to industrialise, to manufacture and to be able to export internationally,” Dlamini says of his vision for the country.

The partnership, Du Plooy comments, will also benefit the local economy in the form of job creation, and further foreign direct investment, for example.

Dlamini, meanwhile, says the partnership has “massive potential to anchor South Africa’s rebuild and recovery from Covid”. To achieve this on a broad front, Dlamini says world class companies are needed, which is one of the reasons why KDI partnered with Bonfiglioli.

He adds that the partnership also holds the potential to recruit young people, train them, give them skills and provide them with opportunities.

“We believe in local for local, and in the localisation of manufacturing, and the skills that are required,” Bonfiglioli chairperson Sonia Bonfiglioli and CEO Fausto Carboni advocate.

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