MAN ENERGY SOLUTIONS: Engineering Energy Transition Across Southern Africa

In one of South Africa’s industrial heartlands, Vanderbijlpark, a significant global player has expanded its provision for the sub-Saharan African market. MAN Energy Solutions SA – the local arm of the global powerhouse owned by VW – is a world leading supplier of innovative technology in greenhouse gas emission reduction, power generation turbines, technical expertise and more. In southern Africa, the company is a key contributor to mining, energy, marine, process industries, petrochemicals, sugar refineries, ash plants, paper and pulp, and more.

From Vanderbijlpark, named after electrical engineer and industrialist Hendrik van der Bijl, MAN Energy Solutions is showing what is possible when global expertise is combined with local knowhow.

Previously recognised as an engine specialist in the market for trucks and buses running on diesel, MAN has been reorganised and rebranded to ensure its core offering is first and foremost in the minds of clients.

EFFICIENCY FOCUSSED

“Our entire business, MAN Energy Solutions Global – with 14,000 people – is focussed on climate change abatement through technological innovation in the energy and efficiency sphere,” says Chris Meyer, Managing Director, MAN Energy Solutions sub-Saharan Africa. “MAN Energy Solutions is focused on greenhouse gas abatement technologies, sequestration, carbon capture, power storage, hydrogen production etc. It is a completely different field from Truck and Bus and, from a responsibility point of view, it is really something that matters and we really feel that we are making a difference.

“When you start sharing some of the capabilities and technologies, and our ability to reengineer, you see people’s eye light up.”

MAN, as a global entity, dates back more than two and a half centuries, originally established in Germany as a heavy industry specialist. Today, MAN Energy Solutions has more than 120 sites around the world and is targeting ongoing leadership status in decarbonisation and carbon neutrality.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, MAN Energy Solutions has been busy building a project pipeline in South Africa that will keep it busy with major clients into the future.

For Meyer, who joined the company in February 2020 just as the Covid storm was brewing, progress has been impressive.=

“It was an interesting time to start,” he smiles. “The key thing that MAN did well before was to focus on ‘repairing the roof while the sun was shining’. A lot of the bottom-line optimisation initiatives were already ticked off, launched, or at least existent. From there, it was very easy to transition that to an executable strategy.”

Part of the strategic reorganisation was to restructure, reallocate and transition employees to new roles and thereby reducing the overall impact on employees. This also enabled a minimal impact to job security through more effective vehicles such as grandfathering certain positions and leveraging natural attrition. The company was able to continue working despite the challenges in the economy. Thanks to integral involvement with clients at foundational level, the company continued to receive repeat orders before seeing a quick turnaround through 2021.

“We certainly adopted a responsibility for our people,” says Meyer, who only took the reins as Managing Director in July 2020. “From an incoming work perspective, we had a lot of repeat customers and that gave us a solid foundation. Growth in our industry during that period was really tough.

“2020 was hard. In 2021, we saw a clear transition in the business and we did exceptionally well, even against pre-Covid standards. There were a lot of things that went into the mix from a strategic point of view. We had a clear strategy for sub-Saharan Africa and we executed on that strategy,” he adds.

LOCAL PRODUCTIVITY

In South Africa, MAN Energy Solutions has a footprint covering the entire nation with offices and workshops in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban. The company’s key offerings are split between three divisions: Industry, Power, and Marine with each offering a unique and comprehensive service backed by unrivalled technical quality.

Previously, the company’s Power and Industry divisions were managed from dual sites in Johannesburg and Vanderbijlpark, with costly logistics connecting the two and a lack of synergistic cooperation. In 2020, planning started to consolidate the two sites, moving all activity to Vanderbijlpark while investing heavily in capability to bring the site up to a new standard of excellence. MAN invested around R90 million citing savings made at the Johannesburg site and connecting the two as key in the financial decision.

“This process offered us significant enhancements in the business,” says Meyer, reminding that Marine Propulsion continued to be spearheaded out of Cape Town and Namibia, and workshops in Durban remained unaffected.  

“We don’t just supply but we service and manufacture from a local content point of view. A lot of focus went into asking ourselves what technologies we should have that could give us enhanced capability that is marketable immediately. We also looked at what constraints are in the business from a capacity point of view, and what technologies could free up capacity in the workforce,” Meyer adds.

With a renewed focus and streamlined strategy fuelled by enhancements in Vanderbijlpark, MAN Energy Solutions has started work on a number of major multi-million Rand projects for blue chip clients.

A recently completed project for Mondi in Richards Bay saw the company overhaul an aging turbine bringing new life and capacity to operations, for which MAN Energy Solutions received great praise from the client.

“It was a significant project, lasting around six months with a lot of interesting challenges. There were a lot of curve balls during the outage. It was a nice project which started small and predictable, but as we opened up the scope grew immensely. There was fantastic customer engagement – they were facing significant costings importing electricity from the grid opposed to generating it themselves. Every step of the way, we took them with us. We committed to getting them back to original performance as this machine had lost around 15% of its original capability. In testing, we could see that our work had achieved this target and more,” highlights Meyer.

Other exciting projects include overhauling barrel compressors at BP in Angola, despatching a new gas turbine for the TotalEnergies refinery in Congo, and work on the main air compressor rotors and oxygen rotors – where one rotor has 40 MW propulsion – at the Air Liquide liquefication plant in Secunda.

Also in Secunda, for Sasol, MAN Energy Solutions is busy manufacturing new diffuser sets for a third-party machine where there are 16 trains involved. This again showcases the unrivalled capability at complex reengineering where customer get the benefit of the latest technological engineering coupled with reduced cost over OEM components. For this to be successful we ensure integrity remains at the forefront of our work and we stand by our solutions. A third party solutions provider with OEM capability and backing.

Expanding beyond southern Africa, the company recently picked up a contract for work in Mauritius, where the power system is very different, tapping into the private sector for additional capacity.

“We recently went to Mauritius to meet with representatives for sugar mills. In Mauritius, they have numerous refineries or gas engines across the country that tie into the central grid. This means the sugar mills are incentivised for generating electricity and we are looking at how we can assist there. We have secured our first job there for September and we are also hoping to expand our footprint at Sasol during the shutdown period in September,” details Meyer.

“For another major OEM, we are manufacturing many blades to be used in Eskom projects with the major delivery taking place during the second and third quarter of this year. Internally, we procured additional large blade manufacturing machinery which enables us to increase our large blade – up to 1.4 meters – by 25%. We are automating and transitioning to configuration management technology. A lot of our lathes and boring mills are being included to give us better quality, wider application, and more effective use for our staff,” he adds.

FUTURE PROOFING

After a period of upheaval – including restructure, rebrand, investment, and a global pandemic – MAN Energy Solutions and Chris Meyer are planning for a sustainable future, with the company improving its local credentials while partnering with those with shared values.

Just two years ago, the company was faced with a challenge around improvement of its BBBEE status. Quickly and efficiently, work has been done to address the situation.

“In August 2020, we were still a Level 5 contributor but by March 21, we moved up to a Level 2 which is substantial. We are busy with more plans to solidify this and eventually get to a Level 1 by no later than 2024. From a supply chain and business partner point of view, that is key for us,” says Meyer. “We must collaborate with responsible contributors to the South African economy. It must also be backed up by technical capability as quality is first and foremost for us.”

In the past two and a half years, MAN Energy Solutions has improved industry leading quality achievement by an additional 300%, a zero-harm focus has led to an improved safety performance of 700%. “This, coupled with an increase in utilisation, is an excellent achievement and I am extremely proud of what the team has achieved. We are shifting the standards and expectations in what we expect and this flows over to our contractors as well. We want them to share our values from a Code of Conduct point of view,” says Meyer.

To further enhance its service for clients, the company has also launched Omnicare, an entity focused on servicing and maintenance of third-party machinery. Not typical in the market, this service will allow potential clients with marine propulsion and power generation engines, turbines, compressors, or generators not manufactured by MAN to receive industry-leading inspections, upgrades, or upkeep. “Many other OEMs have withdrawn from aftersales service on some of the older turbine technologies in coal fired power stations and we see this as an opportunity to service existing and new customers,” suggests Meyer.

Intricately involved in the energy systems in both the private and public sector, MAN Energy Systems is not just another global corporate in South Africa. This is an innovator, and an essential link in turning ideas into power. It serves the communities in which it operates, and it develops the wider economy in the country through the sizeable projects that bring so much opportunity. MAN Energy Solutions is now a name associated with pioneering forward thinking.

“MAN as a company is focussed on greenhouse gas reduction and abatement technologies,” confirms Meyer. “There is a lot of site companies and technologies that we are investing with to consider things like carbon sequestration, power storage solutions beyond conventional self-storage. We have liquid air energy storage which, from an efficiency point of view, is ground-breaking in the energy storage sector. We are also looking at hydrogen production with the latest PEM technologies with the acquisition of H-Tec systems. We are also optimising our current offerings to be more efficient, greener, and run on different fuels such as LNG and ammonia in the shipping industry.

“In South Africa, there is a focus on localisation. In Africa this is more and more common where there is a desire to increase the money spent in-country. With our focus, we have the technological capabilities to manufacture highly complex components which are globally accredited locally,” he adds.

Today, from MAN Energy Solutions in Vanderbijlpark, the message is clear: all problems are solvable, and the company can provide the best technical expertise available to clients across all industry sectors. By employing the best people, encouraging them to thrive, and calling on an internationally-developed knowledge base, the company is growing. The future is in the making, and MAN is driving the modern energy transition.