Today, Wednesday 12 June, saw Acer Africa’s Ignite showcase go live in Johannesburg, where media were given the chance to experience the company’s incoming products firsthand and get an idea of where the brand is headed. Surprisingly, it’s headed to a factor in Boksburg to begin manufacturing its monitors locally, according to a report from Hyptertext.
Acer isn’t interested in doxxing the facility right now, so it’s keeping the exact name and location of the factory under wraps for the time being. But it did confirm that manufacturing was set to begin sometime in July, where it’ll be receiving necessary parts from overseas, while all the building happens locally. Acer said it mainly employs women from the community, with hopes of getting these monitors on shelves before 2024’s end.
Local is lekker, boet
Head of Acer Africa, Glen Du Toit, said that the urge to get into local manufacturing happened when the team expressed a desire to become more involved within the African continent — and as a way to reduce prices, thus bringing in more customers. That’s the idea, anyway.
“Importing fully-build units usually brings very high duties,” said Du Toit. “In November 2022, we got the blessing from Acer Global to start the process of establishing a partnership [with a local manufacturer].”
It took a while, but it got there in the end. When production begins in July, don’t expect Acer to dive right into those 540Hz monitors right away. It’ll be starting small, with the first batch focussing on building simpler 24- and 27in monitors that will be sold at most retailers in South Africa when complete. Only after a second round of manufacturing, beginning in August/September, will it start to work on gaming monitors.
“We’re going to kick off with a 27″ gaming monitor for the end of the year, and that really aims to position Acer to be able to break down some of the barriers for the latest technology being made locally, as the type of monitor – QHD, 4K-type of the monitor – requires a bit more attention,” Du Toit said.
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And? Why should you care? Well, local manufacturing brings with it the hopes that we could potentially see lower prices that you may not normally find from competitors or even from Acer’s own range of imported products. Acer hasn’t confirmed its prices will be reduced, however. Three-year warranties on the other hand…
“We’re going to be offering a three-year exchange warranty because we can,” Du Toit mentioned. “And it’s sustainable because we’re not having to support the price down to make it more affordable, locally manufacturing allows us from duty structure to maintain the price,” Du Toit concluded.
That’s big news for South Africa, which often has to put up with shoddy warranties for imported products. Once production is going smoothly across all three phases, Acer will look to seek approval from the higher-ups to begin building other products locally, though the report does not go into any detail as to what those might be.