Dear Valued Client

SABS is committed to improve communication with customers and stakeholders and this letter provides information about the progress of the turnaround of our laboratory services; our focused commitment to delivering the testing services required by the textile, leather and footwear industry; and our efforts to improve service. Part of our strategy is to ensure that we keep you informed about all these developments to maintain open and transparent communication which is part of one of our core pillars, customer centricity. We have in the recent past undertaken roadshows to meet with you face to face and will continue to do so. We appreciate the valuable feedback and expectations that you shared with us during these interactions. It is against this background that we have decided to share with you our turnaround strategy of the textiles, leather and footwear laboratory in an effort to address some of the challenges you have raised with us.

1. Customer Specific Requirements (CSR)

We are pleased that the issue of ‘partial testing’ has been resolved through the introduction of testing to customer specific requirements (CSR) testing. In the letter that was send to industry last month, we committed ourselves to the re-introduction of this much needed service to you. We count on your support in this journey as we improve our service offering in line with your requirements. To this end, you are welcome to contact us with your enquiries for CSR testing services and we will within our capabilities endeavor to service your requests.

2. SANAS Accreditation

The textile, leather and footwear laboratory has limited accredited methods and as part of our turnaround, we have identified a number of additional methods to incorporate into our capability framework. We have applied to the South African National Accreditation System (SANAS) to increase our scope of accreditation which has been scheduled for February 2019. We will provide further feedback on our progress in this regard.

3. SATRA membership

Following our engagements with industry bodies via our roadshows and meetings, we have already begun the membership renewal process with SATRA. The benefits of such membership will allow the SABS to have access to SATRA’s technical infrastructure, benchmark our testing capabilities with their state of the art facilities and concepts, have access to their technical experts, procure additional instrumentation to close the capability gaps, assist with training of our technicians, as well as opportunities to sub-contract testing should SABS have gaps in our capabilities or require support in managing overflow work during periods of high sample volumes. The target is to have this membership restored before 01 April 2019, the start of our new financial year.

4. Appointment of a laboratory manager

SABS has initiated the process of recruiting a suitably qualified manager to run the textile, leather and footwear laboratories. We have developed an intensive onboarding and training schedule to ensure that the right candidate will be fully capacitated to manage the technical and client service deliverables required. We are currently working on ensuring that we have the new manager commencing work by the 01 February 2019.

5. Equipment renewal programme

SABS has committed R 2 million in the current financial year to procure instrumentation that will enable our laboratory to better service your testing needs. We are planning another phase of renewal as some of our instruments need to be replaced in the period beginning 01 April 2019, with a further R 2.5 million being allocated for this project. Some of the instruments identified for this phase include:
a) Martindale (STM 633)
b) Upper water resistance (Bally Penetrometer)(STM 703)
c) Water resistance (Bally penetrometer)(STM 706)
d) Water vapour permeability (STM 473)
e) Water vapour absorption (STM478)

6. December shutdown of the SABS facilities for maintenance purposes

As you may be aware, one of the critical services required for testing operations is the availability of the required environmental conditions before testing can commence. The SABS facilities infrastructure is in need of critical maintenance to be able to ensure improved availability of the required environmental conditions to the laboratories. The Executive team approved the scheduling of this critical maintenance during the December festive period to minimise the impact to industry in the New Year. This shutdown is planned from 14 December 2018 and testing to resume on 07 January 2019. We acknowledge that this will cause some disruptions and while we will try our best to minimise disruptions, we are confident that the maintenance is enabling improved stability for testing conditions in future.

7. Improved communication

We are committed to listen and to let you know what we are doing. SABS is serious about ensuring that we adopt an inclusive approach and we will continue to send you updates. We invite you to regularly visit our website and social media pages to ensure you have access to these communications. We will soon be advertising the testing services of textile, leather and footwear in a range of trade magazines. Our state-of-the-art footwear slip test machine will be our first feature in a range of updates that we will be sharing with our customers and related stakeholders.

Please continue to share with us your experiences so that we can continue to improve our services to you. We are all excited to be part of this turnaround strategy and appreciate the support of the textiles, leather and footwear industry.

For any enquiries contact:

Petrus Shivambu
Customer Services
email: Petrus.shivambu@sabs.co.za

Yours sincerely,
Johan Louw
Executive: Laboratory Services