Johannesburg — STEEL fabricator Cosira Group will take its first step outside southern Africa next month when it opens an office in Santiago, Chile, and starts looking for a partner to launch a steel business serving South American countries.

CEO John da Silva said yesterday at the official launch of the group's new steel fabrication and construction plant in Vulcania near Brakpan that the group also intended to grow its activities in Africa. It already has a presence in several countries in southern Africa including Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique.

Cosira Group, a 21-year-old business that started in Heriotdale with three employees and now employs 2000 people, has spent R250m on upgrading its facilities in Johannesburg. This includes the cost of building the Vulcania factory, with an initial capacity of 4500 tons a month and will be expanded to 6500 tons in a second phase, as well as upgrading the Heriotdale factory.

After the investment, Cosira's fabrication capacity has increased to 5250 tons, making it the biggest steel fabricator by tonnage in southern Africa.

Da Silva said the capital investment came from Cosira's internal resources. Cosira's turnover last year was about R1,3bn.

Despite the downturn in SA's manufacturing sector, the new plant, called Cosira Vulcan, is operating at full capacity.

Da Silva said the group had managed largely to avoid the recession since a lot of its work was for the mining and power-generation sectors, which had been relatively resilient. The group was working on projects including the Medupi power station and Anglo Platinum's Unki project in Zimbabwe, where there had been no slowdown.

Cosira has five main divisions: Structa-Towers, which builds power transmission and telecommunications towers; detailing, which is its in-house draughting department; a fabrication division that makes steel items for local and international engineering businesses; site construction; and its recently established electrical and instrumentation division.

Da Silva said the board decided in July that the group would start looking to acquire or partner with an earthworks, civils and construction company.

This search was still at an early stage and no decision had been made. There were numerous acquisition opportunities in the prevailing environment, but the main issue was price, he said.

Asked about the possibility of Cosira listing on the JSE, he said its main focus was international expansion and it had no immediate need for capital. If it made a substantial acquisition, it would consider listing but being unlisted had strategic advantages.