Geostott
Steel Fabrication in Johannesburg

A steel manufacturing company situation in South Africa specializing in a variety of products and services including steel forgings, thread rolling, upset forgings, light and heavy fabrications, pressings, overhead line hardware and much more. George Stott and Company.

On completion of his schooling he was sent to be trained as a blacksmith at the famous engineering firm Hall Russell in nearby Aberdeen. After his initial apprenticeship he continued to hone his craft in Glasgow at the Parkhead Forge Works. After the war Mr Stott was re-united with his wife, who was sent to the Eastern Cape for safety, and shortly thereafter George Stott. Ever since, the company has faced a business atmosphere as tough as the African sun itself and have continued to survived several political regime changes and wars with the most recent challenge being faced, that of the complete political turnaround from a minority white regime into a majority lead multi-party democracy. During this time George Stott established a private blacksmith concern in Johannesburg and expanded rapidly to supply the ever growing need of the mining and heavy engineering industries developing around Johannesburg's gold fields. Dr. Alexander Aiken is well known as founding one of the two companies which eventually merged to become KPMG. If not for this foresight the company might have closed down during the next couple of years in which the Gold Standard was relinquished and a series of price wars ensued which outmoded the traditional methods of production. This additional cash flow was put to good use and several invaluable pieces of machinery were bought out which resulted in production increase to a point where the rolling mill was delivering in the region of 600 tons per month. During the course of the WW2 the company continued manufacturing and supplying producta on an ever increasing scale and eventually manufactured a variety of products used in the war efforts. George Stott junior became chairman of the board in 1942 and a period of relative prosperity ensued. Scrap was no longer used for the production of sections with blooms, being sourced rather from Iscor. Mr George Stott Jnr continued to manage the operations of the company during a prosperous period in which several major strategic developments took place. With the additional space available, a modern press shop was erected on the site with the initial purpose of supplying the engineering industry with specialised washers. As time passed the technical ability and machinery improved radically and as a result an in-house tool and die making shop was erected to supply the never ending stream of tooling to the growing number clients across a variety of industries such as mining, heavy engineering, electrification, telecommunication, automotive and agriculture. Towards the end of the late 1970’s a very trying time of international boycotts and mass industrial action started to affect South Africa as a whole and rolling strikes by the militant labour unions in the early 1980’s produced one of the most challenging business environments that the company faced since the days of the Great Depression and the departure from the gold standard in the 1930s. Mr Dennis Dedwith was appointed as MD at the company following the passing of the late Mr Brian Stott. Mr Brian Stott was the last of the Stott relatives who were actively involved in the management of the company at that time although the shareholding was still mostly in the hands of the Stott and Rennie families. What followed during the coming years is a tribute to what can be achieved with extraordinary vision and entrepreneurship. The company has grown in leaps and bounds with several acquisitions in various manufacturing disciplines. The company was a stalwart supplier to the South African electrification industry with its main client being Eskom. The additional machinery was incorporated within Overhead Line Supplies and added significant capacity to supply thousands of tons of manufactured product to the electrification industries. MM&G is a structural steel manufacturer which has grown into an all inclusive manufacturing and project management company which in 2012 won the coveted SAISC steel awards for their sterling management of the Medupi Flue Can project. A further development during 2005 was the introduction of a temporary mine roof support prop manufacturing plant. Having identified suitable machinery during 2006/2007 a streetlight/traffic signal pole division was established which focuses on large scale infrastructure projects conducted by municipalities and other government agencies.