BETTER THAN NEW
UPCYCLED METALS
SA needs more REMANUFACTURING
With Africa’ s most valuable car parc, South Africa has an enormous opportunity with targeted automotive remanufacturing.
Buyers at all global automotive OEMs are under pressure to contain sourcing costs, especially with bill of materials( BOM) issues. And it’ s not only the source costs, but also the environmental certification for BOM buying, that’ s adding even more complexity to buyers.
There is real pressure on OEMs and suppliers to meet materials and technical standards set by engineering, as well as sustainable sourcing and disposal certification required by ESG benchmarks.
Remanufacturing is an underappreciated function in the automotive industry. It offers significant end-of-life and post-production benefits and extracts value from existing parts. It delivers long-term uptime solutions to fleet owners who want to operate vehicles way beyond the conventional 5-year operating cycle.
BETTER THAN NEW
In the off-highway and construction transport sector, heavy-duty trucks work under the most demanding conditions. But also, for very extended lifecycles. It is not unusual for off-highway mixers, dumpers, or 8x8 vehicles to operate for 25 years. That means real demand for parts that might be out of production.
Remanufactured parts are often the solution for operators who need‘ new’ parts, years after the official production of their truck or bakkie model has ceased. There’ s a common misconception that remanufactured parts are just a cost option, cheaper than new ones. But the true value offering is real.
A remanufactured part is often better than a new one. Using the latest tools and calibration, a remanufacturing specialist can replace the internals or mechanical components in a used part with better, newly machined parts. That means the market gets a legacy parts casing, with new, more advanced internals and electronics. This effectively makes the remanufactured part better than the original-spec part was when new.
UPCYCLED METALS
With automotive OEMs and tier 1 parts suppliers under a lot of pressure to account for their source energy consumption and materials sourcing, recycling is invaluable.
Remanufacturing takes a lot of pressure off the mining and materials supply chain because it captures more than 60 % of the core component materials that don’ t wear out( like casings). Without having to make new casings, which require ore or melting-point recasting, remanufacturing saves a huge amount of embedded energy when OEMs or suppliers need to account for ESG or conduct environmental impact assessments for manufacturing.
Valuable electronics, magnetic materials, and rare-earth materials can also be captured and recycled during the remanufacturing process. That means betterthan-new remanufactured parts, without additional ore mining or metal smelting, with embedded energy issues.
WORDS IN ACTION 44 JUNE 2026