“Maritime Africa is a fantastic opportunity for Denel to launch our maritime division in public and articulate our aspirations within the sector” says Ismail Dockrat, Chief Executive Officer, Denel Integrated Systems & Maritime. He is a speaker at the upcoming Maritime Africa conference and exhibition, taking place at the CTICC in Cape Town from 23-24 November, and will focus on the growth of a safe, secure and sustainable African maritime domain. The event will bring together African leaders and global experts from the military, government, defence industry, law enforcement, marine manufacture and maintenance, commercial shipping and offshore extractive industries to share knowledge, experience and best practice. Denel is a gold sponsor at the event.
Just under a year ago, Denel established the new division of Denel Integrated Systems & Maritime (Denel ISM) and, says the CEO, “this new division is meant to diversify Denel into a range of new capabilities and new markets, one of which is the maritime market.”
He continues: “the other two markets under Denel ISM are sovereign technologies and national safety and security. In terms of sovereign technologies, we are responsible for areas such as command and control, electronic warfare, secure communications and integrated systems. In the safety and security space, we are engaging with clients such as the South African Police Services (SAPS), the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA), the Border Management Agency (BMA) and the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC). We are developing our value proposition within these important markets.”
With regard to the maritime sector in particular, Mr Dockrat says, “it is striking that Denel has not had the same relationship with the SA Navy (SAN) as it has historically had with the SA Air Force (SAAF) and the SA Army. So, if you look at the Defence Review which was approved in Parliament earlier this year, it calls on Denel to play a stronger role in the maritime environment.”
He adds: “our key objective in the next year is to become a strategic partner to the South African Navy and from that foundation, to play a broader role in terms of supporting other navies in the region as well as working with the South African shipbuilding and ship repair industry to grow the industry to the benefit of everybody in that sector.
On current opportunities in the maritime sector Mr Dockrat notes that: “when I talk about the maritime industry I refer particularly to the shipbuilding and ship repair industry as well as our naval infrastructure and ports infrastructure in the country and we believe there are enormous opportunities to grow the maritime sector. When we think about the maritime sector in South Africa we have to locate it within the discourse of Operation Phakisa, which I believe is a very bold, exciting and dynamic initiative from Government to stimulate activity in the maritime sector in order to fully realise the potential of South Africa’s ocean economy.”
At the Maritime Africa conference in November, Mr Dockrat will address delegates on “Sub-regional cooperation in the construction and equipping of vessels and installations in Africa”. He says his message will be that “Denel is doing well as a company and is diversifying into the maritime space. We have very strong systems integration, programme management and integrated logistics support capabilities and we think that is a gap in the market in this context. Denel is not going into the business of building ships, we know that there are strong players in the industry that we can partner with, both locally but also importantly, globally. So we are there to form partnerships with others and to offer our value proposition.”
