Fully BEE-compliant Perspex South Africa (Pty) Ltd has enjoyed the position of the southern nation’s leading manufacturer and supplier of Perspex Cast Acrylic sheet since 1966. Since then, the firm has gone though multiple changes of ownership. However, it wasn’t until 2008 when current Managing Director, Stuart Hughes, and co director Bash Moodliar became part of the firm, that big changes started to happen.

Hughes and Moodliar, also major shareholders in the firm, were part of the consortium that acquired the business from Lucite International, a UK-based multinational and the world’s leading manufacturer of acrylic sheet. “They divested from South Africa and we bought the business in January 2008,” Hughes attests.

With a background in both legal private practice and commerce, Hughes says: “What I hope to bring to this company is the experience that I have acquired over many years.” As MD, not only is he responsible for the day to day running of the business, but he also has broader responsibilities: “We are expanding at the moment, so I have responsibility for that expansion and for putting to bed mergers and acquisitions.”

Key strengths
Continuing, he outlines the firm’s key strengths: “We are the only manufacturer of cast acrylic sheet in the sub-Saharan region. We manufacture under licence to Lucite, so we have to comply with very high global standards. What sets us apart is our ability to stock for our customers. We have very short lead times, and are able to stock for the customer so they don’t tie up their working capital in holding massive stocks. We run our own logistics internally, so we make sure that we deliver on time, in full, in the shortest possible time.

“Also, we have a fully staffed research and development laboratory, and a technical facility, which enables us to provide our customers with technical support. We try and create very strategic partnerships with our customers where we don’t only sell them a sheet of Perspex, but we add value to their business.

Through these strengths, combined with cutting edge innovation from the firm’s R&D team, Hughes believes it will start setting it apart from international competition in the future.

Endless possibilities
As Perspex is available in a range of colours, thicknesses, sizes and textures and can be customised to meet specific customer requirements for both internal and external applications, the possibilities are endless. And this is something Hughes is very much aware of and ready to exploit. “We network constantly with architects, specifiers, and designers, and then through our new product development we hope to bring some very new and innovative products to the market.

“Perspex is a mature product, it’s been around for a long time, but is an amazing product in terms of what you can do with different pigments and different effects. Through the use of light and colour, we’re hoping to bring some really exciting new trendy products to the market and we think that the designers and the architects are going to get very excited by these products we are able to bring online,” he explains.

Transformation
Perspex South Africa has transformed itself from a production-led organisation to a driven, sales-led organisation that fully understands the dynamic needs of its marketplace. “Our vision is to be the supplier of choice of acrylic based solutions to not only the South African market but also to international markets, particularly in Africa,” says Hughes.

“We are guided by that vision everyday in everything we do. We try and get new business by constant market penetration; we visit trade shows together with our distributors, and we advertise extensively.”

Capital investments are and have been ongoing for some time, he tells us: “Over four to five years the business has spent in the region of R20 million on various improvements. In essence, most of the improvements are aimed at improving quality.”

Today, the company boasts two full-scale production cast plants and an extrusion machine capable of producing a variety of extruded materials to complement the Cast Acrylic Sheet.

Recycling
One of the interesting qualities of Perspex is that it’s the only plastic in the world that is 100 percent recyclable. And, as members of the Responsible Care Initiative, the firm takes advantage of this recyclable nature by operating a Depolymerisation Plant that converts scrap Perspex into Methyl Methacrylate Monomer, the primary raw material used in the production of Perspex.

“We are one of only four or five manufacturers in the world that have this plant. We have spent some capital on ways of getting Depolymerised Methyl Methacrylate more efficiently into the production process in order to optimise the content of recycled product in each sheet that we manufacture,” he says.

Future
Going forwards, innovation is a “key focus for Perspex South Africa”, says Hughes, as the firm drives its product offering forwards in an increasingly competitive and educated marketplace. In fact, the company’s recently launched Innovations Range, which consists of Fluorescent, Pearlescent and Vario Perspex, demonstrates this constant push for excellence and improvement.

“There will be investment both inside and outside the business,” he adds. “We have quite a foresighted capital expenditure plan to improve quality and to invest in various pieces of kit, ultimately designed to enable us to produce at the lowest possible cost per unit.”

The business has two legs to it; it manufactures Perspex cast acrylic sheet and also trades the raw material on behalf of Lucite. And Hughes says that the firm will work to increase its profile on the distribution side of the business. “That will require us investing to increase our capacity to distribute other bulk chemicals on behalf of global principles,” he adds.

“We’re in the process of acquiring another manufacturing entity in South Africa to increase the basket of products that we are able to supply into our existing markets and into the potential markets that we’ve identified, such as the architectural market and the interior design market,” he says, outlining some exciting developments for the not so distant future that will undoubtedly hold the firm in good stead for many years to come.