Hexing Electrical SA has officially opened a dedicated smart water meter manufacturing facility in Gauteng, marking a significant expansion of the company's local production capabilities beyond electricity metering into the water sector. The new factory will produce the ZLink range of smart water meters designed for municipal bulk, commercial and residential water metering applications across South Africa and the broader SADC region. This investment positions Hexing as one of the few companies manufacturing both smart electricity and smart water metering devices locally in South Africa.
Creating Jobs and Building Local Skills
The new facility will create more than 70 new permanent positions spanning production line assembly, quality assurance, calibration, firmware testing and warehousing. These roles add to Hexing's existing South African manufacturing workforce and reinforce the company's commitment to local job creation and skills development in the advanced manufacturing sector.
Training programmes for new staff include IPC soldering certification, IoT device calibration techniques and lean manufacturing methodologies developed across Hexing's global factory network. The investment in skills transfer ensures that the Gauteng facility operates at the same quality and efficiency standards as Hexing's international production lines.
More than 70 new permanent jobs in advanced manufacturing, with training programmes covering IPC soldering certification, IoT calibration and lean manufacturing methodologies.
ZLink Smart Water Meter Technology
The ZLink smart water meter platform represents a significant technological advance over conventional mechanical displacement meters that have been the standard in South African municipal water networks for decades.
- Ultrasonic flow measurement with no moving parts, eliminating mechanical wear and accuracy degradation over time
- Integrated NB-IoT or LoRa communication module transmitting hourly consumption readings to a cloud platform
- Automated leak detection alerts identifying continuous low-flow patterns that indicate pipe or fitting failures
- Reverse flow detection catching illegal connections or backflow contamination events
- Tamper detection sensors monitoring for physical interference with the meter body or communication antenna
- Battery life exceeding ten years under typical municipal operating conditions
The combination of ultrasonic measurement accuracy and IoT connectivity means that ZLink meters provide utilities with consumption data that is both more accurate and more timely than anything achievable with conventional mechanical meters and manual reading processes.
Strengthening the Local Supply Chain
Local manufacturing of smart water meters addresses a critical supply chain vulnerability for South African municipalities. Import-dependent metering procurement exposes utilities to shipping delays, foreign exchange fluctuations, customs bottlenecks and extended lead times that can derail deployment schedules. By producing ZLink water meters on South African soil, Hexing can offer municipalities lead times measured in weeks rather than months, domestic warranty service and rapid access to spare parts and replacement units.
- Lead times reduced from months to weeks compared to imported alternatives
- Domestic warranty service with local spare parts inventory
- Support for DTIC localisation targets in the water metering sector
- Contribution to Hexing's Level 4 BBBEE contributor scorecard
- Preferential procurement advantages for municipalities under PPPFA regulations
Addressing South Africa's Water Revenue Crisis
Water revenue losses in South African municipalities are estimated to exceed 40 per cent in some distribution areas, driven by unmetered connections, ageing mechanical meters with degraded accuracy and leaking reticulation networks. Smart water metering provides the consumption visibility needed to identify and address these losses systematically.
Water losses in some South African municipal distribution areas exceed 40 per cent, representing billions of rands in unrecovered revenue annually.
The ZLink platform integrates with existing municipal billing systems and can share the same communication network and data management infrastructure as Hexing's electricity metering solutions. This enables a converged multi-utility metering architecture where a single head-end system, analytics platform and operations team manages both electricity and water metering data.
What This Means for South African Municipalities
For municipalities planning integrated utility modernisation programmes, Hexing now offers a single-source solution covering electricity AMI, prepaid metering, water metering and grid automation, all supported by local manufacturing, in-country engineering and a national service network. The opening of the ZLink factory means municipalities no longer need to source electricity and water metering from separate international suppliers with separate support structures.
Contact Hexing Electrical SA to request ZLink product specifications, discuss pilot deployment options or arrange a factory tour.