Yamato opens new office in South Africa

The new offices are situated in Midrand, home to an expanding prestigious commercial and business zone on the outskirts of Johannesburg, which links the borders of the city with Pretoria.

Midrand has excellent infrastructure links with the rest of South Africa, due to its proximity to the N1 Highway and OR Tambo International Airport. This allows Yamato South Africa to offer a nationwide service to South African vendors, businesses and manufacturers.

Natasha Le Grange of Yamato South Africa said: “We service the entire country, so setting up an office in a prime location that enables multi-national food producers as well as smaller manufacturing concerns to deal with Yamato direct was essential.”

“Our biggest challenge is to make sure our customers know that they can deal directly with Yamato rather than through an agency, which was the case in the past. This includes new equipment sales, spare parts and after sales services.”

More than five times larger than the UK, with roughly the same population, South Africa offers much in the way of opportunities.

Natasha le Grange added: “There is a big market for Yamato machines in South Africa. Quick turnaround time when it comes to after sales service is imperative. The customers in South Africa want to deal directly with companies, rather than through agents and distributors. We provide a direct link through all stages of project delivery and this gives the customer a variety of options when implementing automation. This enables us to create our own opportunities in the market.”

The size of the country is a challenge, logistically, with a large amount of potential customers being small businesses.
The new South African office will stock and sell genuine Yamato replacement parts, with full guarantees, as well as providing tailored after sales support to existing installations. As well as this, it will offer payment terms, stock machines and other solutions to suit the South African business culture.

“We offer a great service and back up facility, as well as the top selling snack multihead weighing solution in the world. We are relatively new in the market, in terms of dealing directly, but the market in South Africa is expanding and our new office development is an ideal opportunity for us,” said Natasha Le Grange.

Yamato South Africa will be exhibiting multihead weighing, checkweighing and x-ray solutions at ProPak Africa 2019 on stand C26 in Hall 6 of the Expo Centre, NASREC, Johannesburg, South Africa from 12 to 15 March.