A plethora of large-bore water distribution tenders in the market at present is good news for leading fluid conveyance and solutions providers.

“The water infrastructure market is definitely growing,” Phillip Bawden, national product manager for plastics at Incledon, comments. In terms of growth opportunities, the focus is firmly on bulk water pipelines.

“The government is investing heavily in infrastructure. While we do not foresee much by way of maintenance-type work absorbing significant quantities of materials, one has to take into consideration the natural expansion of reticulation-type networks,” Bawden notes.

“This means that our growth will come from any expansions of existing townships, or building new areas. While we are a fairly young country, unlike Europe, even our current infrastructure is starting to fall into disrepair. Asbestos cement pipe laid 40 years ago is starting to fail, for example. This has meant large-scale rehabilitation work in major cities like Cape Town and Durban,” Bawden elaborates.

Trenchless technologies taking the lead

The fact that large metropolitan areas have to rehabilitate their reticulation networks has resulted in a trend for far less disruptive pipe-laying technologies.

The current emphasis is trenchless technologies, which involves pulling a new pipe into an existing one.

“That technology is very advanced at the moment, with the majority of the pipe being HDPE, because it is such a hardy product. In addition, the necessary connections are quite easy, while it is a relatively simple system to put together, especially using Plasson ElectroFusion fittings, for example,” Bawden highlights.

In terms of growth elsewhere on the continent, Bawden notes that Incledon is capable of piggybacking on the Dawn Africa Trading distribution network.

“There is major potential in mining countries such as Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia, for example, which have a relatively small manufacturing and distribution base, and therefore need to import much of their infrastructure products,” he concludes.