ZISMO Engineering

ZISMO Engineering (Pty) Ltd is a wholly citizen owned Electrical Engineering Company operating from Gaborone West Industrial. The Company started operating on 11 March 2002, initially focusing on Transmission and Distribution projects. However, in 2006 ZISMO decided to diversify and started operating a low voltage motor rewinding workshop and a Distribution transformers refurbishment and manufacture workshop. In 2011 the company started knocking on different doors for an opportunity to refurbish a High Voltage Motor. BCL answered by delivering a 12-ton, 1 700kW, 3.3kV slip ring, high voltage Motor during the second quarter of 2012. "This was not what we budgeted for" says the company Managing Director, Mr Justice Moilwa, "but failure is not an option and besides; we had been persistent for this opportunity". When we finally opened the motor for damage assessment, it was evident the amount of work needed was more than a simple rewinding, both the rotor and stator had to be remanufactured. What followed was the beginning of a journey of the first Botswana based Company to refurbish a High Voltage Motor. This was marked by the successful testing of the high voltage motor on 26 June 2013. It was witnessed by Engineers from different Engineering Consulting Firms, Mines, Parastatals and other HV motor users, who were in awe of the non-load testing of the machine, and were afforded the opportunity to take a closer look and thus voice their queries, concerns and general comments. According to ZISMO Workshop Manager, Arnold Boitshwarelo, the remanufacture of this BCL Ball mill crusher motor is a first in Botswana's engineering history and has provided an opportunity for ZISMO Engineering to allocate funds of over P1 million towards training Batswana engineers; procurement of cutting edge testing equipment; repair tools and equipment and general capacity building within the firm. This operation was lead by Mr Lui Gomes, a specialist in high voltage motors sourced from South Africa to train and facilitate skill transfer to citizen apprentices. All the refurbishment with the exception of highly specialised tasks such as VPI testing, shaft and bearing manufacturing were performed in house. These include but are not limited to, stripping of the motor, rewinding of stator, rotor re- stacking, intermediate and final testing. According to ZISMO Engineering Managing Director, Justice Moilwa, BCL has taken a bold step in entrusting such a complex remanufacture job to a local company and for that he applauds the organisation and its management and wishes other local companies could follow suit as that is the only way Botswana can become self sustainable. "When we established ZISMO in March 2002, the biggest challenges involved proving our expertise to the then industry's sceptics. In a way our prospective clients were right to be sceptical, given our fledgling status, with limited technical equipment, resources and/ or skilled manpower.