Denco's Success in Uganda

UGANDA is proving to be a fruitful country in which to do business in, according to Cape Town based technology company, Denco Automated. Locally Denco Automated is best known for its expertise in providing quality industrial automation and power management solutions. The company offers electrical solutions that encompass system design, system development, system construction and installation, and all related documentation.

In 1999 Denco Automated received an initial order from a leading Ugandan company in the plastics industry. The contract was to upgrade the electrical reticulation system of an existing factory. In 2003 the same company awarded another much larger contract.

The contract was for Denco Automated to provide the customer with an entire electrical supply system as a turn-key project for a new 11 000sq m factory consuming 4.4MW of power. A total of six generators are used in the system.

The managing director and founder of Denco Automated, Dennis Farge, says this project was completed so successfully that several additional contracts were awarded for the expansion of the new plant.

Recently another Ugandan company, Phenix Logistics, awarded Denco Automted with a multi-million Rand contract to refurbish the electrical supply system of their factory. Phenix Logistics manufactures organic cotton products and this expansion and upgrade project was interestingly funded by a Japanese bank. “

“ This contract was for the provision of a new electrical supply system from the 11KV incoming supply, to the electrical distribution system for individual machines throughout the factory “and everything else in between”, Farge says.

After several site visits to establish the needs of the client a complete power system, including all technical drawings and documentation, was designed, engineered and produced by Denco Automted.

After construction of the electrical panels at Denco Automated’s factory all the equipment, including 11 500 meters of SWA cable, were shipped to the customers site.

As Denco Automated is a Platinum Distributor for Rockwell Automation, an official supplier of ASCO Power Technologies and an official supplier of Broadcrown generators, the company was able to supply Phenix Logistics with a complete solution encompassing quality products and services.

Various products from the vendors were used for this project and these include Allen Bradley products from Rockwell Automation, automatic transfer switches and transient voltage surge suppressors from ASCO and power generation equipment.

Broadly speaking, the project included the following:

• A main distribution board designed for two mains transformers plus two back-up generators of 725 KVA each.

• Seamless switching of power between normal and emergency supplies.

• Power factor correction equipment.

Farge says Uganda’s power supply challenges are far greater than that of South Africa in terms of quality of supply and consistency owing to an ageing and poorly maintained national distribution network and insufficient power generation capacity.

He says frequent load-shedding causes a huge number of surges on the power lines which can cause substantial damage to electrical equipment. To overcome these problems ASCO’s transient voltage surge suppressors were also installed.

Farge believes the success Denco Automated is achieving in Uganda follows from the company’s quality approach and the implementation of quality cost effective solutions at other projects in the country.

“Word of mouth is very important. Phenix inspected our systems completed successfully at other customers before awarding us the contract”, Farge says.

Meanwhile Denco continues to make a name for itself in sectors closer to home including food and beverage, infrastructure and buildings (HVAC control and power management), machine design and control (pneumatics, motion control, plastic extrusion) and many more automated systems.

“All systems are designed, manufactured and configured at our factory, allowing us to implement strict quality control measures. Also, all the equipment we use in our systems comply with international standards and regulations”, Farge says.