New Year message from One Eighty’s Founder and Director

Happy New Year!

Having said that, I can’t believe we are at the end of January already – one twelfth of the way through 2019! It’s our first newsletter for the year, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a truly fantastic year. May 2019 be happy and prosperous!

To start the year, I thought it would be good to reflect on our successes this year and share where we are as a business right now.

2018 was both a highly successful and a very interesting year for One Eighty. We have morphed into an organisational structure which has largely been driven by the needs of the industry and by many strategic changes implemented by our General Manager, Paul Swanepoel, who specialised in organisational structure during his MBA.

The company is lead now by four strategic business units, namely Metal Alloys, Advanced Materials, Capital Projects and Laboratory Function. Each unit is led by a graduate engineer and assisted by junior engineers and technicians. Within each unit we provide our failure investigation service, our product optimisation service, materials selection and problem solving. We specialise in solving problems with engineering materials, whatever those problems may be.

We have made massive strides within out laboratory function unit in that we are now the most widely scoped laboratory in Africa. This means that we are SANAS accredited for the greatest number of test methods for metallurgical testing. Achieving this was a massive undertaking but thanks to our Quality Manager, Maxime Ellard, and the contribution of our Laboratory Manager, Bhongo Mzizi, we did it!

We launched our Capital Projects unit last year and it has gained very good traction, which shows that our vision to provide metallurgical and materials expertise to optimise any Capital Project is well received – and we look forward to expanding our reach in 2019.

I am very proud of the team of people that are One Eighty. It is a dynamic group of highly capable engineers who share the vision to be the African partner of choice for materials engineering solutions of today and tomorrow. It is because of this team of people that we could be eligible and awarded the South African Stainless Steel Development Association Award in the Services Category last year, which was a great privilege and very humbling.

We must thank the industry and the willingness for industry to engage with us for more than 16 years now – because it is only through your willingness to engage with us over the years that we have been able to understand your needs and then provide a service that meets these needs. We are constantly evolving as the industry evolves, we believe it is important to always stay relevant.

As the Managing Director of One Eighty, I am very proud of how we have grown and evolved as a company, and of where we are right now. 2019 is indeed an exciting year, and I look forward to building on our firm foundation during this year, and to continuing to be part of the journey that our valued customers are also taking.

In our February newsletter, I will take more time to introduce you to our incredible team.

If there is anyone else you know who would appreciate receiving this newsletter, please let us have their details. We always appreciate any feedback and questions. Please send them to info@one-eighty-degrees.com.

We look forward to a wonderful 2019 working with you.

With best wishes,
On behalf of the Team at One Eighty,
Dr Janet Cotton
Founder and Director