(Not) bringing PRIVA to South Africa

(Not) bringing PRIVA to South Africa 1

One of our first assignments was with the Building Management System (BMS) supplier and installer PRIVA. Having worked with them on different projects e.g. Fashion Centre Almere in 2002, YMoS saw an opportunity to bring the company to South Africa.

A Quick Scan of such opportunity was carried out with PRIVA in 2004, convincing both parties that such opportunity needed to progress to the next phase of exploration. South Africa was experiencing a building boom leading up to the FIFA 2010 World Cup, hosted in South Africa.  

(Not) bringing PRIVA to South Africa 2
(Not) bringing PRIVA to South Africa 3

A Feasibility study was carried out in 2005, with in-depth interviews with various South African stakeholders, ranging from installers, Building Managers and property developers.

Though this was positive and well received, research on the price level installed BMS pointed out that key drivers like the electricity prices were still to low to have PRIVA make a real compelling commercial offer in the market. The project to bring PRIVA to South Africa stopped here.

In retrospect this was probably the wrong decision.

From 2007 to 2019, electricity tariffs increased by 446%, whilst inflation over this period was 98%. Thus electricity tariffs increased more than four-fold in 12 years. Based on the currently approved increases for 2020 and 2021, the total increase in electricity tariffs from 2007 to 2021 was 520%