Reunert is betting its growth on business outside South Africa as a way to offset a lacklustre economic reality that has caused declines in its operations at home. The ICT company highlighted “muted economic and market growth” as a material matter in its annual report for the 2025 financial year. Persistent low GDP and gross domestic fixed investment (GDFI) growth, “high unemployment, and declining business and investor confidence in South Africa continue to reflect economic pressures, evident in extended customer order cycles, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises”.
“The 2025 financial year was characterised by a challenging South African market, partially offset by positive growth in the group’s non-South African markets,” said group chair Mohamed Husain. He noted that the defence sector remained strong and both the African and international markets in the electrical engineering segment “retained their solid growth trajectories”. The group, established more than 130 years ago, has three segments: electrical engineering, which includes power and telecom cables; ICT; and applied electronics, which includes renewable energy solutions and radars.
South Africa’s economic growth trended upward through 2025, with three consecutive quarters of economic growth. In early December, Stats SA reported that GDP rose 0.5% in the third quarter after a 0.9% rise in the second. While there are green shoots and general positivity, Reunert said much of this promise is yet to be realised by the ICT sector.
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“In South Africa, despite there being solid progress made towards improving several of the key structural impediments to accelerated economic growth, the real positive impact on the ground has yet to be felt,” said Husain. He said the key drivers of Reunert’s growth, which are reflected in the macroeconomic indicators of GDP and business confidence for the ICT segment and GDFI for electrical engineering, “all tracked negatively throughout the year”. “South Africa’s infrastructure investment, specifically, decreased year on year and fell well below both government commitments and the group’s expectations. This decrease in infrastructure investment levels is expected to be temporary but, in this financial year, negatively impacted the [electrical engineering] segment and the group.” As such, the group has been working to bolster its international operations, helping to spread its risk.
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