Fibre-optic plant to open near Mamelodi

A new optical-fibre cable manufacturing facility will be launched in Pretoria this week at a time where major investment in the economy by the private sector has stalled.

The first black-owned opticalfibre factory in the country is opening its doors in Pretoria in a market dominated by the likes of Jasco and Altech.

Dartcom Fibre Solutions, situated about 1km from Mamelodi, is headed by black industrialist programme participant Khudusela Pitje.

The facility is projected to produce 1,000km of fibre a month and 12,000km a year.

The factory will produce the fibre under licence from international fibre giant OFS Fitel, which has sewn in an option to purchase 45% of the plant over time “because they believe we are going to develop something they would want to participate in”, Pitje said.

“We’ve spent five years developing a market and we’ve now positioned the product as one of the leading fibre products in the country for most operators. Chances are if you walk down the road and you see somebody digging the road, there’s a 60% probability it’s OFS fibre because we’ve spent time developing that market.”

Establishing a raw-fibre manufacturing plant requires an estimated R2bn investment.

Global-research company Markets and Research forecast in April that the optical fibre market would be valued at $5bn by 2021 — with a compounded yearly growth rate of 9.8% from 2016 to 2021, as cloud computing, data transfer and storage, video-on-demand content, among other things, required faster data transmission.

Optic fibre is the backbone of data transmission.

In SA, there is a rush by telecoms providers to roll out fibre, with Telkom having previously said it intended to reach 1-million homes in 2018.

The Dartcom plant will produce its first commercial product between January and February 2018 as it is testing a single production line, which could be ramped up to two in future.

Pitje, the CEO of New GX Capital, the holding company for the Dartcom business, received funding from the Department of Trade and Industry’s black industrialist programme for a waste management business he is building with the City of Tshwane. The state-funded industrialist programme refused to assist him when he approached it again to fund the fibre plant.

This, he believes, is a key weakness of the programme. He argues that, to create black industrialists with scale, at least R3bn in equity would have to be provided.

“They [the departmenti] must think distinctly and take it [black industrialist] away from being a political term ... The policy itself is 20 years too late,” he said.

Pitje raised R100m himself for the fibre plant, with FNB as the senior creditor.