SCHLETTER
The Solar Mounting Group
THE SCHLETTER GROUP
The Schletter Group is one of the world’s leading producers of solar mounting systems, manufacturing aluminium and steel systems to exacting standards, and continually striving to perfect their design for safety and ease of use. Our sophisticated solutions deliver supreme quality and durability – wherever the sun shines.
Despite the Group’s transition from a small family business to a truly global enterprise, it has never wavered in its commitment to reliability and innovation: only the finest quality materials are sourced for manufacture, and Schletter’s insistence on product strength, durability, and absolute protection against corrosion, ensure that its systems can withstand the toughest weather conditions, from hurricane-speed wind loads, to tremors and earthquakes, or corrosive coastal climates.
Schletter prides itself on the calibre of its employees, whom it sees as the foundation to its success: engineers, metalworkers, service- and sales professionals are recruited from around the world, and combine their skills, local knowledge and diverse international experience to generate the unique synergy that sets Schletter apart from its competitors.
OPEN AREA SYSTEMS
When Schletter designs its mounting systems, it doesn’t just focus on sunshine: it considers storms, heavy rainfall, snow loads, wind loads, and earthquakes, which are, after all, the extreme stresses that a PV system must endure during its lifetime. The result is a relentless focus on quality, from development through to the finished product. And it doesn’t stop there: this same commitment to quality is applied to large-scale ground mount projects, where the group will plan, calculate, and install turnkey photovoltaic systems – on a worldwide scale.
ROOFTOP SYSTEMS
Schletter’s focus is not only on quality and durability: we listen to our customers, especially those who install our products, and make sure that we adapt what we know to what they want. As a result, our products are tailor-made to fit any roof type or pitch, and more importantly, to make installation as safe and easy as possible, with the consequent saving on labour costs and returns.
There are countless varieties of pitched roofs, depending on shape, pitch and roofing material, making the installation of a solar system an individual challenge; with Schletter’s extensive product range and the modular structure of its systems, solar power plants can be installed on practically every pitched roof using any PV module currently on the market. And this adaptability applies equally to Schletter’s flat roof systems, which are especially quick and easy to mount on the appropriate structure: our engineers calculate the best design for your roof, taking into account the applicable building regulations and climatic conditions, to ensure that loads are optimally spread over the supporting structures without exceeding the reserve load capacity, while the number of roof penetrations is minimised for fastened systems through intelligent design and planning, ensuring that your roof remains permanently leak proof.
TRACKER SYSTEM
The Schletter Tracking System combines the advantages of the highest ground cover ratio (GCR) on the market with our unique and patented design principle of mechanical selflocking - at any post, in any position. This gives the system the stability of a fixed tilt system and makes it resistant to aeroelastic phenomena, such as the galloping effect.
OUR PROMISE Mounting a photovoltaic system requires more than a mere metal clamp. It needs a plan that has been thoroughly thought through and adapted to suit actual circumstances. Starting with initial soil or structural analysis and ending with tightening the very last screw, we accompany our customers through the entire process. With our uncompromising standards, we ensure that our mounting solutions realise their full potential. This care and holistic approach are an integral part of our company’s DNA, and as applicable in South Africa as in any other country.
SCHLETTER SOLAR (SOUTH AFRICA)
Schletter Solar in South Africa has been through a fascinating learning curve since its incorporation in 2011. Starting life as a full-blown EPC, the company was involved in the successful development of several large solar farms, but as solar incentives were withdrawn, locally and internationally, and Eskom’s woes began, we realised that we needed to become leaner and more focused on product sales than on installations.
The upshot of this was the creation of a small team of dedicated employees, operating out of the Cape Town Head office, with a warehouse in Midrand, Johannesburg. Under the direction of John Proudfoot, a CA (SA) with nearly 30 years of experience, seasoned professionals, Dean Lewis and Adriaan Rootman, are on hand to provide clients with expert guidance in rooftop and ground mount projects, respectively. Dean has been with the company almost since inception, and Adriaan brings over eleven years of hard-earned experience in both solar solutions and operational savvy; they are ably assisted from Johannesburg by Angelique Newman and Owen Bondi.
Manie Jacobs manages the finance department, with administrative and sales help from Portia Henkeman, who is also the voice of the sales enquiry counter. Kate Mosotho, our depot manager, and her assistant, Celiwe Mthembu, do a grand job of managing the warehouse, with very able assistance from our warehouse operatives, Oom Peet Julies and KB Mosenye. For expert advice and superb quality products, please contact us in Cape Town (021 418 3187) or Midrand (010 595 1185), or mail us at info.za@schletter-group.com.