Thursday, 23 April 2015

State Awards TEMIC To Manufacture Poynting's DigiAnt

Tshwane East Manufacturing Incubation Centre (TEMIC) is one of the companies that has been awarded the "Supply and Delivery of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) Outdoor Antenna and related accessories" USAASA tender.

Launched in 2014, TEMIC was established through a joint venture undertaking between Poynting Antennas (Pty) Ltd (Poynting) and Lawrence Global Manufacturing primarily for the local production of the DigiAnt digital television antenna.

Being a leading antenna manufacturer that designs, manufactures and sells cellular antenna products and related equipment mainly to the telecommunications and broadcasting industries, Poynting CTO, Dr Derek Nitch is the mastermind who designed this novel antenna and it has been patented worldwide.

"We are excited that the DigiAnt is part of the digital migration," says Poynting SkunkWorks Unit Manager and TEMIC CEO, Eduard Walker: "DigiAnt is the first new type of television antenna invented in roughly fifty years and offers unsurpassed performance. It can be collapsed using swivels to allow for a packaging size of around ten times less than equivalent antennas. Most of the antenna consist of precast aluminium parts making mass production repeatable and easy while allowing full local production by TEMIC"

The production of the DigiAnt marks a milestone in South Africa's progress towards digital migration and it brings great opportunity for social and economic development in the Tshwane East area.

Through the enterprise development programme of TEMIC, SMMEs will be incubated to partake meaningfully in the business and manufacturing opportunities emanating from the massive Broadcasting Digital Migration to be implemented in South Africa as well as other African countries. The Incubation Centre will also promote the development of small businesses involved in the production of high pressure aluminium die casting and steel fabrication products.

Dr André Fourie, CEO of Poynting says that TEMIC is passionate about moving digitalization forward in Africa: "We are proud that a South African designed antenna will form part of providing low income citizens with access to educational content, information and entertainment.  By being part of the digital migration TEMIC will make a long term difference to all South Africans via access to digital TV content, but also by TEMIC establishing new high tech manufacturing capacity and building new companies in our industry via its business incubation activities."