Reunert Group is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) across its 17 business units, as the JSE-listed technology group pursues new business growth, to ultimately increase revenue.
Speaking during a panel discussion on Reunert’s AI deployment at the recent IQbusiness Geshidocon 2026 conference, Reunert group CEO Anthonie de Beer said the diversified technology group has invested in numerous AI service licences.
Employees are making extensive use of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot, he noted.
De Beer discussed the group’s approach to AI adoption, governance, investment and business transformation on stage withBiase De Gregorio, executive partner and AI lead at IQbusiness.
While AI represents a major shift in how businesses can use data and analytics to improve decision-making, De Beer argued that Reunert’s objective is not simply to automate work or reduce headcount.
The more important opportunity is to use the time and capacity created by AI to improve decision-making, develop more efficient employees and pursue significant growth, he said.
“AI, through data analytics, should create the opportunity for us to make better judgement calls, be more efficient and develop our people in a manner where they can unlock the full potential of our group.
“And that is a commitment I’ve made to the organisation to say, on balance, the AI journey that we're going on as Reunert is not about job-cutting at all. It is about us driving our business towards its full potential. This places revenue growth, rather than headcount reduction, at the centre of Reunert’s AI strategy.”
De Beer said the group needs to change its growth profile, while continuing to invest in AI, rather than treating efficiency gains as an end in themselves.
Reunert’s latest financial results, for the six months ended 31 March 2026, show a mixed performance, with group revenue from continuing operations rising 1% to R6.31 billion, and operating profit falling 23% to R453 million. Headline earnings per share declined 22% to 185 cents, while attributable profit from continuing operations fell to R290 million from R382 million.
The group is taking a centralised approach to governance, while allowing individual business units to identify and develop practical applications, De Beer stated.
This approach is designed to establish what works, identify resistance to adoption and determine which processes need to change before AI initiatives are rolled out more broadly, he explained.
“We've identified a couple of business units, and we take those key initiatives that we have across the business, and we're putting a lot of horsepower behind trying to understand what we need to do in those business units to accelerate their AI adoption and get the full potential and benefit of AI.
“These test cases have given us the ability to understand what we need to do to accelerate and scale this.”
De Beer pointed out governance is intended to provide employees with certainty about what they can do with AI, while addressing data sensitivity, security and other risks.
Research firm McKinsey estimates generative AI could generate $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in additional annual value globally across 63 use cases.
According to the report, the largest opportunities are concentrated in customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and research and development. It also estimates that generative AI could increase the impact of all AI and analytics by 15% to 40%.
Boardroom discussion
Reunert is a South African industrial group that owns a diversified portfolio in three operating segments: electrical engineering, information and communication technologies, and applied electronics.
It is the parent company and majority shareholder of IQbusiness. Its other subsidiaries include Reutech Radar Systems, Electronic Communications Network, Nashua and CBI-electric: Low Voltage.
While AI is already a standing agenda item in monthly meetings with each business unit leader, De Beer stated that over the next year, the conversation needs to move beyond reporting on training, licences or experiments.
Instead, executives should be able to demonstrate how analytics and AI are helping their businesses units become more productive and pursue substantial growth.
“In a year, I want this conversation to be a real conversation around what analytics we are getting that is making us a better business as an organisation that is chasing substantial growth. I don't want to just know that we are able to extract important information to analyse the numbers in a better manner. I want to understand: are we solving somebody's problem, are we always solving our own problem, or are we solving our clients’ problems?”
The ambition is for AI adoption to become part of Reunert’s organisational DNA, rather than remaining the responsibility of the company’s specialised technology team, he asserted.
He added the scale and speed of the current AI cycle means every business leader needs to participate in AI-related discussions and decisions, regardless of age or technical background.
“It is absolutely the job of every single one of us to get on to this journey, and if you don't, you will for sure fall behind. And the beauty of what's going on right now is that the 50- and 60-year-olds can actually develop at the same pace as the 30-year-olds and the 20-year-olds. We've got an opportunity to actually catch up with them.”
He described the current AI environment as a “super cycle” that Reunert needs to exploit, while maintaining responsible controls.
For the group, that means experimenting, learning quickly and applying what works – without allowing the pursuit of perfect systems to delay adoption, he commented.
Productivity gains
The CEO said the impact of AI is already visible in the way employees prepare for meetings, analyse information and make decisions, although he cautioned it is difficult to attach a single financial figure to the return on investment (ROI) generated by its AI licences as yet.
He argued that AI is improving productivity in ways that do not always show up immediately in conventional ROI calculations.
“Because you can now prepare significantly better for any conversation that you have, you can focus on judgement calls, and make more sound judgement calls by having data and analytics that is significantly better. So, it hides in places where people are more efficient, it hides in places where judgement calls are enhanced and in places where the benefit that the clients are getting out of it is not evident from day one.”
The emerging technology is also being applied to engineering work, where De Beer said AI and analytics are expected to materially reduce the time required to complete projects.
He pointed to engineering teams completing work substantially faster, freeing up skilled employees to undertake additional work and generate more revenue from the same underlying capability.
“ROI hides in places where our engineering skills are doing things not three months faster but 18 months faster because of the use of data analytics. And we can now expect to generate more revenue out of those engineering capabilities because the guys have actually got more time. And we don't know what it's going to be yet, but we know it's going to create a significant benefit.”
Speed vs safety
De Beer described Reunert’s AI strategy as a balancing act between accelerating adoption to speed up processes, while simultaneously having to slow down to maintain the necessary controls.
Reunert does not want to spend years developing governance structures, while competitors move ahead, but neither does it want employees deploying AI without sufficient controls and compliance, he explained.
“We’ve got an engineering business with a lot of intellectual property (IP) that we sell globally through our products. We've got to protect that IP, so we've got to make sure the analytics we put over it is properly secured and stored in a secure environment. We’ve got to slow some of those things down.”
De Beer said before approving major AI investments, Reunert asks the business unit leaders three fundamental questions: whether there is a genuine business use case, whether the solution is secure, and whether sufficient resources and expertise are being committed to make it successful.
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