Altech UEC manufactures 20 millionth set-top box

Thursday, March 6th, 2014
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Altech UEC celebrates manufacture of its 20 millionth set-top box

Altech UEC SA (Pty) Ltd, the largest developer and manufacturer of set-top boxes in Africa, celebrated the production of its twenty millionth set-top box in February 2014.

“This is an important milestone in the history of Altech UEC since we first started manufacturing set-top boxes back in 1993,” said Danie du Toit, Group Managing Director of Altech Multimedia under which Altech UEC resides.

“In the past year we invested approximately R60 million in expanding and upgrading our factory infrastructure to cater for demand for terrestrial set-top boxes and this is beginning to pay off. On 25 February, our best day to date, we manufactured 39,660 set-top boxes, that is one set-top box off the production line every 2.2 seconds,” he added.

According to Danie, the biggest market for Altech UEC at the moment is the rest of Africa due to the roll-out of Digital Terrestrial Television.

“Africa is digitizing at an increasing rate, with the sub-Saharan market alone estimated to be in excess of 60 million set-top boxes. With our recent upgrades and our focus on productivity and technology innovation, we have the capability to manufacture seven million set-top boxes per annum. This ensures that Altech UEC is well placed to meet current and future demand for set-top boxes, particularly in light of the migration to Digital Terrestrial Television, both in South Africa and the rest of Africa,” he said.

Not only did the upgrade to its manufacturing operation lower the cost of production and increase output, it also enabled Altech UEC to create more jobs, in line with the South African government’s job creation objectives.

“The upgrade investments created an additional 120 specialised and sustainable jobs, bringing to more than 700 the number of people employed directly in our manufacturing operations. In addition to this, we have a global design and development team of approximately 130 engineers. As a Level 2 B-BBEE contributor, our investment in technology and production processes is one example of our commitment to creating employment as part of the digital migration process and government’s overall job creation targets,” he concluded.