From foundries and smelting facilities to mine shaft exploration and heavy-duty production reverse engineering capabilities, Sovereign Engineering has the experience and skillset to offer full turnkey solutions from design to manufacturing.

Sovereign Engineering maintains offices in Johannesburg and Somerset West, South Africa and is a full-scale draughting and design engineering company with extensive experience in various engineering industries. Their experience ranges from concept design work in both 2D and 3D to fully engineered site layouts and extends to manufacturing capabilities too.

“My experience initially stemmed from working for a well-known energy corporation where I worked for 13 years, specialising in high-voltage direct current (HVDC) design and installation work. I worked extensively with anything from 132kV to 400kV greenfield and brownfield turnkey projects all over Africa,” explains Pieter Muller, owner of Sovereign Engineering. “We would take care of all the steel work, switchgear work, pretty much everything involved in the HVDC side of things.”

“I grew up messing around with and fixing computers as a hobby and so you could say that my interest in technology and technical proficiency started at a young age.”

Sovereign Engineering have worked with some of South Africa’s largest heavy engineering companies such as providing Samancor Chrome with their as-built drawings, conducted full BIM modelling for Scaw Metals at their GMSA site where the entire plant is 3D modelled now, allowing for maintenance planning and future-proof production

“I started Sovereign Engineering in 2014 and for about the last eight years things have been growing quite well with the mining sector picking up a bit. For now, the company is predominantly geared toward reverse engineering that involves a lot of 3D scanning, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) work – which is a remote sensing technology that uses pulsed laser light to measure distances, creating highly accurate 3D maps of environments – as well as drone scanning.”

“Our capabilities in terms of reverse engineering also extend to things like little gears, dies, big machines, big crushers and anything related to heavy-duty production type industries, with a focus on mining. Beyond mining we also service other industries like the automotive and foundry industries.”

“We see a lot of potential here in South Africa and our neighbouring countries due to the extensive shipping delays for our reverse engineering services. For example, companies cannot afford to wait three to six months for a replacement flywheel to arrive. Our capabilities mean that we can scan and reverse engineer a component, print it, mould it and get it cast, it’s just a lot easier. And this is why we are getting into 3D printing. But not necessarily your tiny components – we will be doing this at scale,” explains Muller.

“For me it’s a case of if we can build it here, then why not. We’ve got the people, we’ve got the resources, the technology and the suppliers we need when we need them. I want people to be able to drive to my factory and have a look at what we are doing so that they have the confidence in our capabilities. The need for components like dies and moulds is huge and instead of clients having to wait ages for it to be shipped, we can get it manufactured for them and either 3D print the components, or they can take the design back with them and mill it themselves if needed.”

“Information Technology (IT) has always been my passion and like I mentioned, I used to build computers – well mostly broke them until I figured out how they worked and how to fix them. I then went on to study power engineering before realising my interest in draughting and design. Now my job encompasses many rolls as you can imagine with running your own company.”

Muller’s skillset now includes proficiency in AutoCAD and Inventor, BIM 360, Revit, Inventor, computer repair, computer science, computer-aided design (CAD), and SolidWorks.

“One of the bigger projects we worked on in 2025 was the installation of an ABP Induction high-performance induction furnace at South32 Hillside. This project was completed in record time and the new FS40 system with digital DICU3 control was commissioned in just 19 days at South32’s South African site.”

“The furnace is equipped with digital DICU3 technology, an emergency UPS tilting system and advanced digital functionalities, and the solution enhances both safety and process optimisation.”

“One of our main roles for this project was to use our handheld FJD Trion S2 LiDAR scanner to 3D scan the whole site and build the Building Information Modelling (BIM) model for it – it doesn’t matter the size of the site because the S2 is designed for indoor, outdoor and below ground use, though in this case, a drone couldn’t be used because of the confines of the environment and this was why we opted for a hand-held unit.”

“With the advanced BIM information the scanning of the site provides us with we can see in very complex detail everything that’s happening on site – all the pipes, all the connections, pretty much everything. So, if we need to re-engineer a site for instance by removing an old furnace and installing a new one, there is very little that can go wrong as we can play around with the modelling to see ahead of time what will work and what won’t, see the clashes and make design adjustments accordingly. It’s the planning beforehand that ensures fast and reliable installations such as the one at South 32 Hillside.”

“The S2 scanner supports advanced VIO and SLAM algorithms for generating high-quality and reliable point clouds, supporting over 8 000 coordinate systems eliminating unnecessary manual data collection and provides georeferenced point clouds for us to work with. The technology really has come such a long way in a very short time I’m not even sure where we will be with it in five years’ time, especially with artificial intelligence gaining momentum.”

“We sourced the S2 from a company in Pretoria called SOM Survey Instruments.”

“Using an example for the mines, we will go down into the shafts and do all the scanning of the new cavities walking through with our scanners and mapping where they might want to install air ventilation.”

“On the machining side, we make use of a SHINING 3D FreeScan Combo Series Multifunctional Metrology Laser 3D Scanner. It’s supplied by BuildVolume and is a compact metrology-grade scanner with an accuracy of 0.02mm, weighs 620g and offers both blue laser and infrared light technology. It actually won a Red Dot Design Award in 2024.”

“With some of the older equipment and components we get asked to work on, we have to revert some components from imperial to metric measurements. Essentially, what we are doing here is bringing some newer technology and incorporating it with the older technology, especially when it comes to gears and gearboxes themselves. To manufacture some of these components in imperial standards (because they’re not available anymore) just doesn’t make economical sense so we find that re-engineering them and retrofitting them with newer technology creates a real benefit for the customer,” explains Muller.

Sovereign Engineering have recently invested in two ELEGOO OrangeStorm Giga industrial-grade 3D printers that they have imported themselves. They have a build volume of 800 x 800 x 1 000mm and are FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) printers that have filament compatibility for PLA/PETG/TPU

“Although we have recently invested in our own plasma cutter, we are predominantly design engineers. We have built up relationships with specialist engineering shops and will ultimately help direct the manufacturing of our designs and drawings to the best suited engineers for fabrication, but on some of the larger projects, once we have done signoff on our drawings and designs, the process ends there for us.”

3D Printing at scale
“We have recently invested in two ELEGOO OrangeStorm Giga industrial-grade 3D printers that we have imported ourselves. They have a build volume of 800 x 800 x 1 000mm and are FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) printers that have filament compatibility for PLA/PETG/TPU.”

“They support up to four printheads on the X-axis, enabling simultaneous printing of multiple parts and the heated bed is split into four zones for stable temperature control. They also feature filament-runout sensing and power-loss recovery to reduce failed jobs and connect via USB, LAN and Wi-Fi with the system integrating with standard STL and OBJ workflows. The printers can accommodate a spool of material weighing up to 5kg.”

“We have some very exciting ideas for these printers that could really change things for certain common components out there that we work with a lot. Metal 3D printing is something we are very interested in,” says Muller.

Sovereign Engineering have worked with some of South Africa’s largest heavy engineering companies such as providing Samancor Chrome with their as-built drawings, conducted full BIM modelling for Scaw Metals at their GMSA site where the entire plant is 3D modelled now, allowing for maintenance planning and future-proof production. Essentially, you wouldn’t even need to be on site in order to conduct predictive maintenance scheduling.

Sovereign Engineering has also worked with Valterra Platinum Limited, a South African mining company, and the world’s largest primary producer of platinum, AECI, as well as projects in the defence industry.

“Another interesting project we have been involved in was helping to develop Onnu’s biochar unit called the CarboFlow. It’s a proprietary pyrolysis machine that aids thermal decomposition of organic materials at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen and is designed and engineered with the aim to make pyrolysis commercially viable for more projects. Things like wood chips, chicken manure and other redundant material can be collected from a farm for example and made into biochar.”

Biochar is a black, solid substance, which bears a strong resemblance to charcoal and is produced during pyrolysis. It’s lightweight, fine-grained and very porous, which are all properties that are useful in its primary usage as a soil amendment.

“Biochar has other potential uses for renewable energy too in that it can be used as an animal feed supplement, can be used as a replacement for aggregates in building materials meaning it can contribute to carbon-negative buildings, and other industrial uses in that it can be used in water filtration to remove heavy metals and pollutants.”

“Currently Sovereign Engineering employ eight people and we like to say that we are a small but mighty team,” concluded Muller.

For more information contact Sovereign Engineering on +27 (0)60 500 2981 or visit https://svrnengineering.co.za