With more than 60 years of combined experience in South Africa, biometrics supplier Stanley Security Solutions (Pty) Ltd (Stanley) reports that its presence in the mining arena has grown substantially over the past 18 months. SA Mining recently caught up with product manager Kobus le Roux and marketing and sales manager Glen Baptiste to talk about the company’s strategy to further grow its product line in the mining industry.

 A wholly-owned subsidiary of American identification giant, NYSX-listed Stanley Group, Stanley is business driven in the areas of communication and time management, specialising in a broad range of time and access control systems which includes biometric verification and identification. While not an exclusive biometric supplier, Stanley’s products are ideally suited to the mining and industrial industries, ‘assembled to withstand wet, windy, humid and dusty conditions common to mining environments’.
The firm’s largest and widest product range includes Blue line and French manufactured Sagem, which is acquires from Ideco, the sole importer of the product into southern Africa. Stanley is also the world’s biggest supplier of the Sagem kit with South Africa being the biggest product user. According to le Roux, the last 18 months has seen a 50% increase in new sales from mining related business for Stanley.

 We can’t keep up the demand for the Sagem product at the moment, Le Roux enthuses.

Le Roux attributes the significant product growth rate in the mining sector to its service levels, high quality product and the mining sector’s increasing interest to move away from traditional card systems to adopting biometric installations.
Discussing the advantages of using biometric systems in the mining sector, Le Roux says that theft and illegal mining activity – two massive concerns directly impacting bottom line is eradicated. As well as eliminating ‘ghost miners’, the system better tracks time-keeping, ensuring that employees work the hours they clock, saving mining firms’ payroll anywhere between 15% and 25%.

With safety high on the agenda of mining houses, the biometrics system ensures that certain areas accessible to relevantly qualified staff, and ‘buddy’ clocking is also eliminated.
Aside from making new sales in the mining sector, plans are in place to corner a larger section of the market with a focus on maintenance and rental contracts.

“There are various levels of doing business with us including selling, renting and maintaining,” Baptiste explains.

“This is a strategic objective for next year,” says Le Roux, who adds that in current markets this move is particularly attractive to mining houses not willing to be burdened with extra costs.
By tapping into the maintenance market, Stanley will gain a foothold into mining environments utilising other security products. This in time will lend itself to Stanley product implementations, upgrades and other product range installations.

“We have the capacity, volume and backing to easily integrate into other products,” Baptiste explains.

Stanley believes that it is well-positioned to ‘make good’ on its focus to attract larger mining houses that manage extensive operations, as its systems easily adapt and integrate with any SAP and EIP system run by the majors.
The company also recently started offering mining clients a dedicated service level team to assist with any identification problems of queries on a 24 hour service call.

“We have recently restructured the organisation to be more customer focused, with a dedicated division focusing on service levels to our key clients,” he adds. In time, this service is expected to be rolled out to its junior clients as well.
Aside from its maintenance programmes, Stanley reports that its rental service and buy-back programme is increasing in appeal. Immediate cash saving and the associated tax benefits are ensuring that the rental programme remains popular, especially in the current market downturn.

Upgrades to rented products ensure that this system continues to be attractive. The next generation product range, known as the S-QUBE product range, will be rolled-out later this year. The S-QUBE product range, which is today’s cutting edge technology, is backward and forward intergratable with the Sagem range.
All of Stanley’s products are run using electricity, but have battery back-ups in case of power cuts. They are also protected against lightening damage.
Run through wireless connections, Stanley biometric systems ensure that mines located in remote areas with low bandwidth, can be equipped with any Blue Line or Sagem product.