SOUTH AFRICA – Technology services firm Altron is selling its building that housed subsidiary Altron Document Solutions in Isando, Johannesburg and retrenching employees from the business unit.

The company says the printing unit was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in a massive drop in the printing business.

Altron Document Solutions describes itself as “the world’s largest Xerox distributor and Africa’s leading technology and services company”.

It markets and services the complete range of Xerox document equipment, software solutions and services to 26 Sub-Saharan Africa countries.

However, the business was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the Altron Group to sell the Altron Document Solutions building.

“The demand for printing services has declined by about 45% due to COVID-19 and this unfortunately led us to retrench 73 people in Altron Document Solutions,” an Altron spokesperson tells ITWeb.

“With fewer people in the Altron Document Solutions team, we now do not require as much space, so we are selling the building and are looking for an appropriate space elsewhere for our colleagues in that business. We have owned the building for over 40 years,” the spokesperson adds.

Commenting on the Altron building sale, Derrick Chikanga, an analyst at Africa Analysis says like other devices businesses, the printing business was negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown that was enforced by most countries.

He points out that most South African printers originate from European markets while printer components are mostly manufactured in Asian markets.

“As such, the COVID-19 pandemic had an adverse impact on the entire global supply chain thereby negatively impacting the local printing industry,” says Chikanga.

He points out that the work-from-home policy that was adopted by most companies since the onset of the pandemic has also hugely impacted demand for printers by large corporates.

“Most local distributors focus little attention on small office or home office devices with their primary focus being on enterprise-grade printers and since most businesses are still enforcing remote work policies, demand for large format printers has been hugely affected.”

Nonetheless, Chikanga believes the industry will recover as businesses resume operations and some employees return to their offices.

“While the work-from-home policy might continue, not all companies and employees are able work efficiently from home,” he added.

“Working from home also incurs additional costs to companies such as internet connectivity costs and  while the industry might not recover to its original level, some restoration to production in the printing industry should be expected,” he concludes.

Altron has been selling off some non-core businesses since 2017.

Nyati CEO Mteto Nyati announced that the company disposed of its last non-core asset Altech UEC, a set-top manufacturing business to Skyblu Technologies in January last year.

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