The board of the Tongaat-Hulett Group announced in February 2006 plans to unbundle and separately list Hulamin on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, while at the same time introducing BBBEE shareholding. These exciting developments have provided the platform to launch a fresh new logo look for the company.
The history of Hulett Aluminium dates back to 1935, when Alcan opened a sales office in South Africa. Since then, the company has traded under a sequence of names including ALCOSA, Alcan South Africa, Huletts Aluminium and most recently Hulett Aluminium. Since the late 1970's, many stakeholders have also used the name Hulamin, which was originally a short form, and will now become the official name of the company from 1 April 2007.
"We went through a stringent selection process," says Alan Fourie, Chief Executive of Hulamin, and selected one of South Africa's top branding agencies, Espial Go-To-Market, based in Johannesburg. "We are thrilled with our new look, which is now in place leading up to our listing in the next few months."
The new logo will be launched to internal and external stakeholders at events planned across the country. The process commences today, Friday 23 March 2007, in Pietermaritzburg, to be followed by similar functions in Gauteng, and the Western and Eastern Cape.
"The new name and logo capture a bright new image for Hulamin, while reflecting the value in the company's almost 60 year history. The new logo, which is also known as the "spiral of synergy" illustrates respect for our heritage, which is shown in the light blue colour that has been associated with us for decades," Says Fourie.
"Introducing the dark blue and white colours adds the depth, expertise, stability, trust and loyalty that for decades have been associated with our company. The intertwining identical shapes illustrate partnerships with all our stakeholders and the precision of our sophisticated manufacturing processes, as well as our continuous forward motion of progress and growth," Fourie elaborates.
"During the last six years we have grown our total output by a factor of four times and have grown our exports by a factor of 15 times in the same time. It is particularly pleasing that this progress has been sustained and has really only been the first phase of a long journey with many opportunities ahead. Having grown our total output so significantly, our current expectation is that we will maintain our growth momentum over the next few years. We have already taken the next important step in that regard by embarking on the R950 million expansion project that we announced last year and that is now firmly under way."
"What is equally exciting is that the local economy is showing strong sustained growth and South Africa has become one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world. This has had a direct impact on us, where, in the last three years we have seen our local sales volumes grow by more than 50%. Our product and market development initiatives have also triggered our customers' investments amounting to R 900 million in the last five years. These investments have been made possible by the availability of customized products from Hulamin and have triggered the creation of approximately 1000 downstream job opportunities."
About Hulamin:
Hulamin, one of the leading mineral beneficiators in South Africa, is based in Pietermaritzburg, Kwa-ZuluNatal, where it operates a world class aluminium rolling and extrusion plant. It also has extrusion plants in Gauteng and the Western Cape and manufactures a selected range of finished aluminium products. It is also one of South Africa's leading exporters of manufactured products, having won the overall State President's Award for Export Achievement and the MTN/Business Day Technology Top 100 Award.
