GYS was founded in 1964 by Guy Yves Stephany, after the mains power grid in France changed from 110 V to 230 V. “Following this, we developed the knowledge and skills to build chargers (in the 1960s) and welding machines (in the 1970s),” says Alexis Hacques of GYS.
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“Keeping it family owned, in 1997, the company was bought by its current owners, father and son Nicolas and Bruno Bouygues. Nicolas and Bruno have always believed in investing in the future and from the start embraced electronics and started to develop inverters. When they bought the company, it employed 60 people and had a turnover of around €10-million. Nowadays, we employ almost 1 000 people – of which 100 are engineers in our research and development department – make €125-million per year, and are the largest inverter manufacturer in Europe,” Hacques tells African Fusion.
“We have factories in France and China and subsidiaries in Germany, the UK and Italy, as well as a subsidiary in Spain which celebrates its first anniversary in March this year, and a distribution presence all over the world. Importantly, our factory in China is 100% owned by GYS. We do not outsource to any local companies and all the products we manufacture are based on our own engineering designs and built by our own people,” he explains.
From a distribution perspective, Hacques says the company has recently completed a 10 000 m2 extension to its warehouse in France, which has doubled the holding capacity with 20 000 m2 now under roof. “Our tagline and ethos is to invest in the future. Logistics, particularly in the electronics industry, became a big problem during Covid. The new warehouse was built to enable us to store more components for production, along with machines and spares, so that we could keep producing and shipping our products in response to market needs. The GYS response to a crisis is always to invest, in this case in two years’ worth of electronical components and stock,” Hacques states.
Looking a little into the future, Hacques says that in France, from January 2023, legislation came into effect preventing European manufacturers of welding equipment from commercialising transformer-based equipment. “We are entering a new era of eco-design and eco-energy consumption, which is very good for GYS. Most of our products are already inverter-based and we see opportunities to develop additional product ranges for applications where transformers still dominate,” he says.
The GYS-B.E.D. partnership
Craig Bister, the welding and cutting division manager for B.E.D. relates how he and cutting and welding specialist Sean Christian became aware of GYS and its welding offering. “By 2020, we were all experiencing the global Covid pandemic. While locked down at home we were hoping we had a future to come back to. During that time, we began to take notice of the email information we were getting from GYS about its new machines and product launches.
“We soon saw opportunities for us in the mid-range equipment market, because the machines in this range were the ones that were selling. Owing to supply chain challenges at that time, our ability to service the mid-range market in agriculture, small engineering workshops and micro-enterprises was affected and needed improvement.
“So we made contact with GYS and started having online meetings. Formal discussions started in early 2021, but because of travel restrictions we were unable to meet in person. It wasn’t until March of 2022, when Alexis was able to come over from France, that we managed to launch GYS properly in South Africa. We had all our area sales, branch and operations managers from across the country together for the launch of the GYS brand, and we have had a lot of success since,” says Bister.
B.E.D. and GYS share similar practices, values and strategies – and creating shared value for staff, customers and suppliers is at the core of both companies’ business strategies. Both are also known for their abilities to revitalise products and markets, redefine productivity in the value chain, and enable local customer development.
In terms of the GYS product focus for South Africa, Bister says that many mid-tier customers in South Africa still prefer to use transformer-based welding machines, particularly for MIG/MAG welding in the 350 to 500 A range. “They see these machines as much simpler to operate and more robust and reliable, particularly when used in outdoor, remote, and rural environments. We are now supplying many transformer based MIG welding machines to numerous customers in the agriculture and small fabrication industries,” he says.
Also, though, B.E.D. is distributing the GYS range of 200 A stick/SMAW inverters, plasma cutters and DC TIG inverters. “The whole of this range is targeted at the agricultural segment, repair shops and small fabricators supplying local services,” he notes, adding that B.E.D. is striving to become the industry leader in agricultural fabrication.
Turning attention to the local service side, Bister says all B.E.D. service technicians have now been trained to service the GYS machines available in South Africa. “They also have easy access to excellent backup from France because of the comprehensive internet and remote support services available from GYS. If any of our technicians has a problem, they have immediate access to relevant information. And if that does not help, they can connect into the GYS technical support centre in France, where a specialist technician will be on hand to help,” Craig Bister explains.
Along with the initial shipment of welding machines into South Africa, a set of spare PC boards and other replacement parts were made available to the technical team to enable any warranty repairs to be locally done with minimum delay. “We are already fully prepared on the local service side,” Bister assures. “All B.E.D. service technicians have been trained to service the GYS machines available in South Africa and we have the parts and components required for most known warranty issues. And, if a new issue arises, we can report it to GYS in France and they will send the parts we need to South Africa under the warranty agreement,” he adds.
Citing some of the successes B.E.D. has already had with the GYS range, B.E.D. welding and cutting specialist Sean Christian, who specialises in the GYS product portfolio, cites an agricultural company in the Free State called Bok Implemente. “This company was unhappy with the MIG welding machines being used and has now replaced its entire fleet with MAGYS 400 transformer machines. The owner is over the moon with them. His productivity has increased and the welders using the equipment prefer the ease and the simplicity of using the MAGYS MIG transformers to their predecessor’s,” Christian tells African Fusion.
Another 2022 success was a company in Klerksdorp called Consulmet Construction that manufactures mobile plant equipment for the mining industry. “Consulmet Construction builds entire mining plants, such as crusher plants with the conveyor systems needed to feed them. These get fully built before being shipped into Africa for installation by specialist teams. Consulmet Construction has now purchased nine MAGYS MIG transformers and, like Bok Implemente, they are very happy with production performance and we’ve had no comebacks from them either,” he adds.
“Those are the big successes, but setting up a single farmer with a decent 200 A inverter is also a success. When he looks at the machine, I demonstrate it, he tries it and we work together to get the results he wants, then he will buy it, because the GYS machines are different from what people have had before.
For me, that’s also a big success and we have sold many inverters in this way, especially in the agricultural sector,” Sean Christian concludes.
