For pumps and valves manufacturer KSB Pumps and Valves, keeping Africa’s mines, power stations and water utilities running depends less on manufacturing capacity than on knowing exactly where a spare part needs to be, before a customer even asks. The company’s dedicated service, maintenance and spare parts division, SupremeServe, holds stock to support tens of thousands of pumps across the continent, including decades old units still running in water utilities, power stations, mines, chemical plants and smaller installations on farms, municipalities and businesses.
That discipline rests on more than fifty years of supplying critical infrastructure to private and public sector customers. “KSB Pumps and Valves employs sophisticated logistics techniques based on enterprise and manufacturing resource planning software from SAP, which has been specially adapted for the company’s needs,” said Johannes Tokwana, Sales Manager at SupremeServe. A decentralised stockholding model, anchored by a central support base in Johannesburg, ensures branches across South Africa can meet demand.
Service parts such as wear components, seals and hydraulic parts need regular replacement and while keeping fast moving items in stock is straightforward, Tokwana says having them in the right place at the right time is the harder, more essential discipline, one built on structured supply chain planning and forecasting. Beyond South Africa, KSB Pumps and Valves operates across Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Namibia and Angola, with agency support in Ghana, markets often heavily mining driven or grappling with water scarcity. “For us, the human factor is vitally important, with our branches and sales partners still required to regularly visit their customers and identify fast moving and critical items,” explained Tokwana.
The same principle applies regionally, where fast moving parts are identified through installed base data and service history, with critical components prioritised and emergency logistics arranged to protect uptime. “In areas where, for example, municipalities are battling ageing infrastructure and water shortages, or production plants rely on liquid pumping circuits, this type of responsiveness is essential,” added Tokwana. He noted that local manufacturing capability matters most when downtime cannot wait for overseas lead times. The company’s ultimate aim, he stresses, is collaborating with customers on preventative maintenance routines that keep infrastructure dependable long term.
According to Tokwana, the strategic logic is proximity. “By supporting customers from within the continent and coordinating regionally, the company reduces its dependency on longer international supply chains. This is particularly important in remote African operations where logistics can be unpredictable. That is the critical role that KSB SupremeServe plays to close the loop between manufacture, installation and long term operation. That means ensuring the right part is available in the right place at the right time, whether that is Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kitwe or Nairobi,” concluded Tokwana.