Vektronix Company History

The Vektronix pedigree goes back to 1974, when SATV started operating in South Africa. The founding company became TEK Electronics which was bought out by Plessey when they started a subsidiary in South Africa that eventually became a wholly-owned South African company.
In 1998, Plessey South Africa was acquired by Dimension Data, and the new Tellumat was re-established as a privately-owned company, continuing Plessey's focus on being a developer of its own technologies in key niche areas, such as private switching communications systems, microwave radio equipment and avionics products and systems.

Tellumat had manufacturing plants in Cape Town and East London. Early in 2003 the East London management offered to buy the plant from Tellumat and Vektronix was formed.

With orders on its books for R20m worth of products for Circuit Breaker Industries, as well as new analogue television decoders for South Africa and Greece, and 5,000 pre-paid electricity meters for South Africa, Vektronix started operations in May 2003.

Milestones for the plant and members of its executive team include:

1974 Establishment as one of four television plants in South Africa
1977 Diversification into audio products
1976-1983 Introduction of locally manufactured components: TV tuner, loudspeaker chassis, coil and transformer assy,
capacitors, printed circuit boards, plastic parts
1984 First automatic component insertion machine, Factory upgrade ($7 million)
1987 Industrialisation of analogue decoder for South Africa�s first pay television channel, M-Net
1989 First SMT equipment
1992 Export order for analogue decoders
1993 2 million television sets manufactured, 1 million analogue decoders manufactured
1997 Universal GSM line (SMT)
2000 Universal axial sequencer
2003 Formation of Vektronix by Management of former Company.
2003 First new OEM customer supply agreement signed (RAPS)
2004 Vektronix calls for TV assembly hubs
2005 Signing of Manufacturing agreement with Plasmaview Technologies for SKD assembly of LCD and Plasma TV sets.
2005 Agreement reached with SAMSUNG for the manufacture of their Colour TV range for South Africa
2005 Vektronix installs state of the art Radial high speed inserter.
2006 TV assembly migrates to RoHS (Lead free process)
2007 Signing of Manufacturing agreement with PVISION for SKD assembly of LCD and Plasma TV sets.