ABB’s Arvin Ramjee, account manager for pulp and paper at ABB Sub-Saharan Africa, argues that South African pulp and paper mills lose efficiency when their electrical, automation and process control systems do not work together. The argument is in an opinion article that ABB’s PR agency sent to us on 28 October 2026, so it is the company’s view, and ABB sells the integrated systems it recommends. ABB does not put a figure on what disconnected systems cost a mill. This is what the article says, what the independent record shows about the pressure on mills, and what a manufacturer should ask before buying.
What this means for your business: the argument applies to any energy-intensive plant that runs continuously, not only paper. If your electrical gear, drives and control software came from different suppliers at different times, ask whether they share data, and ask any vendor to show measured results from a comparable plant before you commit capital. Treat a vendor’s claim about savings as a claim until you have seen the numbers.
What ABB says
Ramjee’s article makes five points. First, the industry has already bought advanced technology, including process control, drives, instrumentation and quality control, but much of it was installed at different stages of a plant’s life and by different suppliers, so capable systems can run side by side without being fully integrated. Second, the gaps show during a power disturbance or equipment failure, when operators may spend time working out what happened. Third, energy is central to mill economics, so seeing where, when and why power is used matters. Fourth, he writes that “AI cannot fix poor industrial data”, so digital tools need consistent data from the plant floor. Fifth, he says putting several suppliers’ data on one screen is not the same as integration, which means systems that communicate natively.
He closes by naming cost per tonne as the metric that matters, and says ABB’s approach brings electrification, drives, automation, quality control and asset performance together in one architecture.
The pressure on mills is real
Energy costs are the clearest example. Eskom says NERSA approved an average 8.76% increase for direct customers from 1 April 2026, with municipal bulk purchasers averaging 9.01% from 1 July 2026. Ramjee’s article cites NERSA’s 12.74% increase for 2025/26, which was the figure for the previous year, so mills now face a second consecutive increase.
The sector is economically significant. According to the Paper Manufacturers Association of South Africa (PAMSA), as reported by Engineering News in March 2025, the industry contributes about R50 billion to the domestic economy. It exported about R18 billion of pulp in 2024, which exceeded the roughly R7 billion spent importing paper grades not made locally, a net contribution of around R11 billion to the balance of trade. PAMSA also says South Africa recycled 1.2 million tonnes of paper and paper packaging in 2024, a 60% recycling rate; its website repeats the 1.2 million tonne figure.
The strain shows in individual mills. A Daily Maverick analysis in August 2026 describes Mpact’s Springs mill in Ekurhuleni, which it says endured above-inflation water and electricity tariff increases, erratic municipal water outages and load shedding. In 2025, on R1.75 billion of revenue, its operating profit fell to R2 million and Mpact shut down one paper machine, according to the same analysis. That example is about utility costs and reliability, not automation, and the analysis does not suggest that disconnected systems were the cause.
Imports add to the squeeze. Our coverage includes the review of paper tariffs, ITAC’s rejection of a 20% tariff increase on imported paper products, the 5% import duty on most newsprint and the dtic’s meeting with Mondi over cheap imports.
Questions to ask before you buy integration
- What did it measure? Ask for before-and-after figures on availability, energy per tonne or waste from a plant of similar size, and who verified them.
- What actually has to change? Ask whether integration means replacing controllers and drives or connecting what you already have, and what happens to your existing suppliers’ warranties.
- Who owns the data? Ask where plant data is stored, who can access it and what it costs to leave.
- Is the data usable today? Ramjee’s point that analytics need clean data applies whichever supplier you choose; a data audit costs less than a rebuild.
- What is the payback? Convert any efficiency claim into rand per tonne for your mill, and test it against your own energy bill.
What we could not confirm
ABB gives no figures on what disconnected automation costs mills, and we found no independent study that does. We have not spoken to ABB or to a mill. Ramjee’s statement that the industry produced more than 2 million tonnes of paper in 2024, and PAMSA’s reported finding that some mills generate more than half of their energy from biomass, are in the ABB article, and we could not confirm either against PAMSA’s own publications. The PAMSA figures above come from Engineering News’s report of the association, because we could not open PAMSA’s statistics directly.
