Numerical Complex at the heart of our industrial takeoff

By Abdi M Hassan

Kenya: Numerical Machining Complex Limited (NMC) is one of the least well-known, most misunderstood and poorly appreciated of Kenya’s industrial plants.

This is a great and abiding pity, for NMC is also literally the workshop of Vision 2030’s industrialisation component.

Formerly the Nyayo Motor Corporation (also abbreviated NMC), it was incorporated under the Companies’ Act as a Limited Liability Company in 1994.

It will, therefore, celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2014. NMC is on the cusp of greatness —in tandem with the Vision 2030 rollout, the Complex is about to undergo unprecedented upscale in output, growth and quality.

Among other upscales in operational growth, the Complex’s 1,200 acres of land in Athi River District, Machakos County, is earmarked for the installation of the Mini Steel Mill, a Vision 2030 flagship project whose success is crucial to the entire industrialisation effort in Kenya for the rest of this century.

Precision tools

A machining corporation is an engineering firm that produces millions of parts for a very wide range of customers; indeed across multiple sectors of a national economy, including governmental, private and nongovernmental. NMC’s products range from replacement machinery and component parts for the manufacturing and processing sectors to capital goods for agro-industry and technical training institutions.

Its precision-tooled machinery and parts are also used throughout the coffee, tea, sugar, cement, oil, automotive and railways sectors. Experience, expertise and excellence are the watchwords of every successful national machining corporation. In Kenya, NMC is the economy’s workshop, its machining garage and after-sales service and maintenance hub.

NMC literally drives huge swathes of the national economy. Industry performance, productivity and sales volumes are crucially driven by machining corporations. Kenyans should keep focused on the fact that this key driver of the economy is also a crucial feature of the Vision 2030 rollout. To make its full and enabling contribution to Vision 2030, NMC will have to deliver to unprecedented-in-Kenya levels of highest quality precision machining.

Already, the Complex, an ISO 9001: 2008 certified engineering firm, uses state-of-the-art computer numerical controlled (CNC) technology in its high-precision machining and computer aided design (CAD). It is also an authorised reseller of AutoCAD (2D design software) and AutoCAD Inventor (3D design software).

NMC’s very wide mandate and remit is the commercial production of steel, engineering design and development of machinery and components. NMC’S mission statement, is a thoroughly 21st Century declaration of intent: “To produce steel, design, process and manufacture high integrity machinery and components that exceed customer requirements through employing appropriate state-of-the-art technology and highly skilled manpower”. Its milestones include the Mavuno (Harvest) range of agro-machinery.

Great future

The Mavuno water pumps are increasingly popular among rural Kenyans. Among NMC products in development are the innovative design and manufacture of a hyacinth weed harvester on Lake Victoria for the National Water Conservation and Pipeline Corporation, and micro hydro-power plants for the Ministry of Energy capable of supplying 100 rural households per unit.

The NMC design and development of a rice harvester for the Ministry of Agriculture . NMC should have a much higher positive profile among Kenyans than has been the case since the early 1990s, when it assembled the Nyayo Pioneer Car to great fanfare before promptly fading from public view.

Now that Mr Adan Mohamed is the Cabinet Secretary for Industrialisation, it is hoped NMC will not only acquire a positive public profile commensurate with its servicing of machinery and parts in the national economy, but also lead innovation in the machining sector.

Mr Mohamed, 50, is a Harvard University-educated career banker and a member of the African Leadership Network (ALN), a group of visionaries whose motto is “Powering Africa’s Prosperity”. ALN pools and provides thought leadership for a new generation of the continent’s leaders. Manufacturing is Kenya’s largest employer and foreign exchange earner after agriculture, but has suffered from lack of strategic thought leadership.

The twin scourges of unemployment and runaway trade deficits will surely bite the dust under a ministerial dispensation that fully appreciates the potential of an entity like NMC —  and intervenes decisively. Mr Mohamed has arrived in the nick of time when NMC is finally shaking off a crisis fomented by an incompetent management that has since been removed.

Once MNC deals with its grabbed land (the Complex has lost fully 500 acres of 1,700 bequeathed by the Motor Company and is facing serious encroachment on the rest) the road to Kenya’s industrialisation will be finally commissioned.

Indeed, job creation and innovation hubs like the NMC need every strategic protection and leadership that they can get.

The writer is a Board Director, NMC and an Advocate, of the High Court of Kenya.