12 January 2011
Southern Mapping Confirms Global Market Entry
Aerial surveying and airborne remote sensing company, Southern Mapping Company (SMC), announced that, following the launch of Southern Mapping Geospatial (SMG) in 2010, the company will in future present itself as Southern Mapping International.
Peter Moir, Chief Executive for the group, says : “Companies are organic and must change according to market developments relevant to the sectors in which they conduct their business. We launched Southern Mapping Company in 2006 with more than 50 years collective Lidar experience between the founding members. We recorded success in various sectors including mining, agriculture, energy, municipal and disaster management, to mention a few. During this time we invested in new products, such as the Orion airborne laser terrain mapper at a cost of $1.2 million – one of the most modern in the world.”
Moir says that the decision to launch Southern Mapping Geospatial with Black ownership was the next phase in the business plan in order to set in place a company that will remain focused on South African clients. It is the Company’s intention to evolve Southern Mapping Geospatial, the South African arm of the Group, into the most powerful Black owned, Black managed and Black staffed Survey companies on the African continent that can compete with similar companies World-wide. Southern Mapping International will support business development on other continents, but with special attention on projects in Africa through its existing network of clients, technologies and GIS specialists.
“Our global brand will in future dictate our growth objectives and should also positively impact on our local performance” says Moir. “It will enable us to apply our expertise worldwide and feed new solutions into SMC and SMG locally to enhance their performance. We aim to expand our workforce with new talent, which we will require from world markets who may join our team on international projects, and potentially also be deployed to our South African operations.”
The group of companies will remain focused on photogrammetric applications, Lidar, Hyperspectral, GIS and general aerial surveying projects. “We have some clients in Canada, Australia, as well as Europe, for who we are assigned projects in Africa, and it is our intention to further strengthen our relations with them and identify new potential customers who want to venture into Africa, especially with Greenfields projects. We have also recently completed work in France where 2,500kms of power line was surveyed,” concludes Moir.
