Skyriders offers a variety of rope access aided services to numerous industries such as power-generation
The increase in workers is a sure-fire indication of sustained growth at the rope-access specialist, which still derives 75% of its workload from the South African market. “There was certainly an increase in turnover last year,” Skyriders Marketing Manager Mike Zinn comments.
“The majority of our targets that we set for the business were met and, in a few cases, exceeded. Our focus going forward in 2017 will be to consolidate what we achieved during the latter stage of 2016,” Zinn adds.
Electricity utility Eskom remains a major client, with Skyriders enjoying an ongoing scope of work at both Medupi and Kusile Power Stations, as well as at the Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme. Another major source of repeat work has been various projects for Sasol.
The big challenge for Skyriders in previous years has been the quiet winter months, during which time there is little opportunity to undertake any regular maintenance work at the power utility. This trend was finally broken in 2016, with an extremely busy winter for all Skyriders’ clients.
“A trend that we are picking up on is new and old clients experimenting with our alternate access service offering in order to assist with their maintenance budgets, which are being stretched further as cost-cutting and lacklustre economic growth take bite,” Zinn explains.
Skyriders offers a variety of rope-access aided services to numerous industries, such as power generation, petrochemical, mining, heavy industry and facilities management. “We look forward to the official launch of two new services in 2017,” Zinn reveals.
Current services include non-destructive testing (NDT) and inspection, concrete inspection, maintenance and repairs, application of coating systems, working-at-height safety systems, welding, and confined-space rescue and standby.