Guest: Tapiwa Samanga, Chief Executive Officer of The Production Technologies Association of South Africa

Since the early 1990s, South Africa has lost more than 80% of its capacity to support its own manufacturing sectors. One of the main reasons for this has been due to the neglect and decline of the local tooling sector, and this has had an exponentially negative impact on the manufacturing economy, which has led to de-industrialisation. Tooling is a multi-sector requirement, primarily in the automotive, steel, and aerospace fields. This loss of capacity is directly linked to international trade and the outsourcing of tooling to the rapidly developing and highly competitive Chinese tooling industry. We speak to the The Production Technologies Association of South Africa (PtSA), which represents the Tool, Die, Mould and Special Machining Industry, to discuss more the decline in capacity in the industry, and the loss of competitiveness leading to the loss of ability to support the manufacturing sector and the economy.