ARB is South Africa's fastest growing black-empowered electrical wholesaler. With a head office in Durban, and a national branch network built over the past 30 years, ARB has a presence in all major business centres in South Africa-Johannesburg, Cape Town, East London, Pietermaritzburg, RichardsBay and Nelspruit. All premises are group-owned.
ARB offers a wide range of locally manufactured products including power and instrumentation cabling, conductors, overhead line hardware, insulators and transformers and general electrical contracting materials to over 4 500 customers throughout South and sub-Saharan Africa. It services five strategic business sectors in these regions:
Large and Heavy Industry;
Parastatals;
Construction industry;
Electrical contractors including those working on government's overhead electrification programme and independents; and
Mining industry.
ARB maintains a fleet of over 100 vehicles, equipped to optimize delivery times.
JSE Listed The ARB Group was listed on the Main Board of the JSE in November 2007 under the 'Electronic and Electrical Equipment' sector. The capital raised on listing has enabled ARB to accelerate its organic growth by further expanding its presence across Southern Africa and provides the company with funding to capitalise on value-adding acquisition opportunities.
Expansion Programme ARB's Nelspruit branch, which began trading in May 2008, has exceeded all expectations and has entrenched ARB's presence in the region. Nelspruit is a strategic growth area for ARB, being a 2010 World Cup host city, and exposes ARB to the benefits of the mining and tourism driven growth prospects in this region. The Nelspruit branch will further serve as a springboard into Mozambique with its positioning as the economic hub of the Maputo Corridor.
Paragon Electrical Group (Paragon), a leading electrical and lighting wholesaler in the greater Pretoria and Centurion areas was recently acquired as a going concern. The transaction was effective on 1 March 2010 and included certain of the assets, staff and properties of Paragon for a maximum purchase price of R30 million. The transaction was funded from ARB's existing cash reserves.
"This is our first acquisition since listing in November 2007 and marks a significant milestone for the group. We have been assessing several acquisition opportunities for some time and Paragon was a natural fit for us due to its strong reputation, operational similarity and strategic geographic footprint. The acquisition is in line with our stated growth strategy and extends our national footprint to 12 branches throughout South Africa. ARB will now have an immediate and well-established presence throughout the fast growing Pretoria and Centurion markets. In addition, these branches will serve as a base from which we are able to access and service the nearby, high growth regions of Witbank and Rustenburg," said ARB CEO, Byron Nichles.
Looking forward, ARB has identified sub-Saharan Africa as a key growth market and will seek to position itself to further penetrate the mining industry as this key economic sector recovers.
Operations and Positioning As a leading supplier to the local infrastructure sector, ARB is benefiting from unprecedented public sector spend. The newly elected cabinet has re-iterated government's commitment to alleviate the affordable housing backlog and ARB is well positioned to benefit from this. The electrification of rural areas also continues unabated, particularly in schools and clinics.
Black Empowerment ARB is proud to be one of only a handful of empowered electrical wholesalers. Black-owned Batsomi Power (Pty) Limited acquired 26% of ARB Electrical Wholesalers (Pty) Limited in November 2005.The Batsomi group currently focuses its investment opportunities in the power generation, hospitality, gaming and healthcare sectors and also provides advisory services in Private-Public Partnerships, corporate finance and other management consulting areas.
More than 75% of ARB's 350 staff members are black, while almost 25% of executive management positions are held by black staff and the company is committed to improving black representation across the board.