![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/LEADS-PIC-01.jpg\")
<\/a>After his first year in the workshop sweeping the floor and cleaning machines, Giuseppe saw that Tony was not going anywhere. He was finally allowed to start learning a trade, and within seven years was a qualified boilermaker. He began taking a role in the running of the modest workshop, which then employed five artisans and 22 labourers. Perhaps the most expensive item of plant was a an oxy-acetylene profile cutter with an optical eye that followed a one-dimensional drawn paper template \u2013 fairly advanced technology for those days. With these resources, Efficient Engineering made components for a number of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAn important shift for the business was when we started to move away from the lighter work and focus more on heavier components for mining and materials handling,\u201d says Tony. \u201cThis delivered more work and better margins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the late 1980s, Efficient Engineering had developed a loyal following of customers in this niche \u2013 fabricating components for equipment such as circular stackers, bucket wheel reclaimers and drum reclaimers. Machining was still outsourced, but the focus on quality and accuracy was always paramount; this allowed the company to make a name for itself, fabricating and assembling to the highest standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A slow and challenging time was to come in the last years of the 1990s, when the economy had slumped. Tony took over the business from his father in 2000, also buying out his father\u2019s business partner, and began the task of building up the business again. After a few good contracts, the company was back on its way and looking for space to expand premises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Working with developers Abbeydale Construction, and with the in-principle support of the Industrial Development Corporation, work began in 2006 on the company\u2019s Phase 1 engineering facilities on 28,000 square metres of land in Germiston. They relocated in 2007, and within four months were repaying the developers twice as fast as they needed to, he says. With the added space, machinery and lifting capacity, the company had quadrupled its turnover, and a new era of expansion had begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After only a year of continued growth, work started on another building of 4,500 square metres on the same site \u2013 to be called Phase 2. Investing in an adjacent plot, Efficient Engineering then created the space for the building of Phase 3, and the Abbeydale Construction team went straight from one to the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis gave us the capability, for instance, to build the whole bowl for mining trucks,\u201d says Tony. \u201cWe became a one-stop shop, as we had all the machinery and space we required \u2013 from large gantry cranes and machining equipment to shot-blasting to specialised painting facilities. We didn\u2019t have to outsource anything, so the work became quicker while still closely controlling quality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, Efficient Engineering is in a class of its own, being one of only a few companies who can still perform this range of heavy engineering in-house. As a black empowered entity since 2010, the company subsequently expanded further into its Phase 4 and Phase 5 premises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith the challenge of Covid-19 behind us, we experienced a good recovery in the 2022 financial year \u2013 with FY2023 in fact being the best year we\u2019ve had,\u201d he says. \u201cLooking at how well we are doing now, we are confident that FY2024 will be as good if not better than last year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company\u2019s future looks brighter still as South Africa\u2019s focus on local content is better applied, notes Tony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEfficient Engineering is now well placed to produce locally what is often sourced from India or China,\u201d he says. \u201cThe emphasis on local content could enable companies like ours to create jobs, develop skills and add vital capacity to our economy for a more prosperous future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TAKING THE BUSINESS FROM GOOD TO GREAT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Efficient Engineering CEO Tony Cimato wanted to follow in his father Giuseppe\u2019s technical career, but his father wanted him to study law; Giuseppe needed some persuading and took his time giving his son the trade he wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI told my father that I didn\u2019t want to waste his money or my time \u2013 that I would rather work in his factory,\u201d he says. \u201cI was always passionate about that work, spending my holiday time tinkering, welding, grinding, painting and various other jobs. He taught me a great deal in those early years, from about six years old onwards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While his father finally agreed to Tony\u2019s entreaties, he was going to test his resolve. Tony\u2019s first assignment in the workshop was as a floor-sweeper, which he was kept at for his first six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was not allowed to touch any tools, but my father insisted that I first had to understand how clean a workshop needed to be before it was fit for working in,\u201d he says. \u201cMore importantly, he argued that sweeping floors would ensure that I knew the standard of work I would expect when I one day hired a sweeper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lesson was well learnt, and Tony says he carried this through to every facility he ever managed \u2013 ensuring that they were always spotless. After his six months of sweeping, his trials were not yet over. He was put onto the job of cleaning machines with soluble oil \u2013 with a pungent smell that could not be removed for days. After two months of that, he was put onto the task of measuring nuts and bolts in the storeroom with a Vernier calliper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo this day, I can tell you the size of nut or bolt just by looking at it \u2013 whether it is imperial or metric,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, my first year in the workshop was not glamourous, but in retrospect I certainly learned some valuable basic principles for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has been 55 years since Giuseppe Cimato began his own business \u2013 Efficient Engineering \u2013 in a small workshop in the south of Johannesburg. Celebrating this significant milestone in May 2023, Efficient Engineering has grown into one of South Africa\u2019s leading heavy fabricators with a reputation for quality and reliability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-client-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coralynne.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>