Ten bays, thirteen certified installers and a scheduling discipline that determines whether the business earns 20% margins or none.

The installation process

A full-body paint protection film installation consumes approximately 42 certified installer-hours over three working days. The process is sequential and cannot be meaningfully compressed without quality loss.

1. Intake and documented inspection. The vehicle is photographed under inspection lighting and existing defects recorded. This protects both parties and is the foundation of warranty administration.
2. Decontamination wash and chemical decontamination, approximately 3 hours.
3. Paint correction. Film magnifies defects rather than hiding them, so the paint must be corrected first, 8 to 12 hours depending on condition.
4. Pattern generation and plotting. Software-cut patterns from the licensed database, cut on the studio plotter, 1.5 hours.
5. Installation. Panel-by-panel application in a controlled environment, with edge wrapping and relief cuts on compound curves, 22 to 26 hours, frequently two installers in parallel.
6. Curing and inspection. Infrared curing followed by a full inspection under corrected lighting.
7. Handover. The customer inspects the vehicle with the installer before collection and the warranty is registered.

Capacity architecture

Table 17. Capacity model

The gap between the pale and solid areas is unsold installer capacity. It is the single largest source of value destruction in the adverse scenarios.

Supply chain and inventory

Film is imported from the United States and Europe on an eight to ten week ocean lead time. The Company holds 72 days of inventory, comprising roughly six weeks of consumption cover plus safety stock against the most commonly used film widths. Orders are placed monthly against a rolling three-month consumption forecast derived from the booking schedule.

Landed cost is built up as free-on-board price, ocean freight, customs duty, port and clearing charges, and inland transport. Import value-added tax is paid on clearing and recovered on approximately a 45-day lag, which is carried as a receivable in the working capital schedule. Forward cover is taken on approximately 70% of the rolling twelve-month import requirement at an assumed cost of 4.0% annualised; beyond twelve months the exposure is unhedged, as discussed in Section 16.

Quality control

Rework is provisioned at 2.0% of revenue in the base case. The provision is not conservative padding, it reflects a real and recurring cost. A failed full-body installation destroys approximately R24,000 of film and 42 installer-hours, and neither is recoverable from the manufacturer, whose warranty covers film defect rather than installation error.

Table 18. Cost of a 1 percentage point movement in rework rate, FY32

Electricity and business continuity

Each studio requires uninterrupted power for lighting, filtration, compressed air and infrared curing. Loss of positive-pressure filtration mid-installation risks contaminating a job in progress. Capital expenditure includes inverter and battery capacity sized to carry critical loads through a four-hour outage. Electricity cost is escalated at 11% per annum in the model, materially above CPI, reflecting the Eskom tariff trajectory.