Brasco begins operations from a family garage with the establishment of its Electrical division. The business is built around a foundation that remains part of the Group today: technical capability, dependable service and a willingness to invest for the long term.

Brasco expands into commercial kitchen extraction cleaning. What begins as a specialist cleaning operation develops over the following decades into a national business servicing commercial kitchens, extraction systems and fire-prevention equipment.

By 2002, Brasco Kitchen Extraction Cleaning had grown to an estimated 45% share of its local market, demonstrating the scale the business had achieved less than a decade after its establishment.

Brasco Group enters commercial and industrial refrigeration and HVAC through Coolcare. Coolcare develops from a refrigeration service operation into a multidisciplinary business covering service and maintenance, new installations, refrigeration plants, HVAC, electrical integration, controls and large-scale commercial and industrial projects.

Brasco enters industrial air filtration with the establishment of Brasco Industrial Filtration. Initially service-driven, the business builds its knowledge by maintaining and repairing industrial dust-collection equipment in the field. This hands-on experience becomes the engineering foundation for Brasco’s transition from servicing other manufacturers’ equipment to designing and manufacturing its own.

Only four years after entering the filtration industry, Brasco designed and manufactured its first complete baghouse. This becomes a defining moment in the company’s history, marking the transition from filtration service provider to equipment manufacturer.

Coolcare takes an important technological step by entering the CO₂ refrigeration market. This begins a long-term investment in natural refrigerants, specialist technical knowledge and CO₂ refrigeration capability. Today, Coolcare maintains approximately 55 MW of CO₂ refrigeration capacity across customer sites, alongside approximately 670 retail and industrial sites using predominantly conventional refrigerants. The long-term strategy is to support customers in progressively transitioning towards natural and lower-impact refrigerants.

Brasco Filtration moves into a dedicated approximately 3,000 m² manufacturing facility, providing the infrastructure required to expand local production and accelerate development of its own filtration equipment.

Brasco acquires the manufacturing assets required to establish Hirospark, bringing industrial filter cage production into the Group. This represents an early step in a strategy that would become central to Brasco Filtration: vertical integration.

After more than 25 years in kitchen extraction cleaning, Brasco expands deeper into kitchen extraction engineering and fire protection. Brasco becomes an ANSUL-approved service provider, positioning the company among the early specialist kitchen extraction cleaning businesses in its market to achieve OEM approval for ANSUL kitchen fire suppression equipment.

Under Brasco management, Hirospark achieves ISO 9001 certification, formalising the quality-management systems behind the Group’s growing manufacturing operation.

Coolcare begins an aggressive national expansion programme. The strategy moves beyond servicing customers from a central base and invests in permanent regional infrastructure, technicians, management, warehousing and service vehicles to create genuine boots-on-the-ground capability across South Africa.

Coolcare establishes a fully operational branch in Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal, including offices and warehousing, creating a permanent base from which to support customers across the province.

Brasco expands its specialist cleaning capabilities, including professional and solar-panel cleaning solutions designed to support cleanliness, visibility, operational efficiency and solar performance.

Brasco Cleaning establishes a fully operational Ballito branch with offices, warehousing and dedicated regional personnel.

Brasco begins developing a reseller and representative network across Southern Africa. The strategy extends the reach of Brasco-manufactured products beyond the Group’s directly operated branches and supports the development of a broader African distribution platform.

Kidde approves Brasco as a service partner for its commercial kitchen fire suppression equipment. Together with existing ANSUL capability, this strengthens Brasco’s integrated extraction, cleaning and OEM-supported fire suppression offering.

By September 2023, approximately 87% of Brasco Filtration’s product offering is manufactured locally in-house. This demonstrates how far the business has evolved since its service-led beginnings in 2011 and its first complete baghouse in 2015.

Coolcare completes 24 installations during 2024, including projects across Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, Middelburg and Ermelo. Major milestones include a large-scale HVAC installation at Rhema Church and securing Makro as a new customer, with revamp projects commencing at Crown Mines and Centurion.

Coolcare develops a dedicated CO₂ Training Centre at its headquarters, providing hands-on specialist training for technicians and new recruits and strengthening the technical skills required for the natural-refrigerant transition.

Brasco invests in semi-automated filtration manufacturing lines, creating production capability of up to approximately 1,800 filters per day. The investment increases manufacturing capacity while improving repeatability, quality and the Group’s ability to compete for larger local and international orders.

Brasco Filtration establishes a permanent service team in Cape Town while expanding coverage across KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, North West, Northern Cape and the Free State. The company’s strategy increasingly shifts towards international growth, engineering development and becoming a globally recognised OEM.

Hirospark’s cage manufacturing operation is fully integrated into Brasco Filtration, consolidating equipment manufacturing, filter bags, cartridges and cages under the Brasco Filtration platform.

Coolcare establishes a satellite operation in Pietermaritzburg, strengthening its KwaZulu-Natal footprint and regional response capability.

Brasco demonstrates the evolution of its kitchen division from cleaning into a complete engineering and fire-protection offering. At Shoprite Goldenwalk, Brasco designed and installed a new extraction system complete with a Kidde fire suppression system. At Sun City, the business installed a new ANSUL system at The Palace, serviced and repaired 19 existing ANSUL systems and installed an additional system at The Palace staff canteen.

Brasco Cleaning expands beyond its traditional kitchen expertise into specialist services including solar-panel and window cleaning. At Safripol Vanderbijl, the team cleaned 15,232 solar panels over eight weeks, with the project’s monitoring system recording a 22% improvement in power supply per panel following cleaning.

Coolcare establishes permanent operations in Cape Town, further developing the national infrastructure created under its 2022 growth strategy.

Brasco Filtration strengthens its international technology and supply chain through strategic relationships with specialist Chinese, Italian and French partners. These relationships support product development, specialist component manufacturing and the transfer of international technology into Brasco’s South African manufacturing platform.

Brasco secures an OEM relationship with French manufacturer STIF for its VIGILEX range of ATEX-rated explosion-protection products. This expands Brasco’s filtration offering into critical explosion-protection components for applications involving combustible dust.

Brasco releases its latest generation of locally developed filtration systems, incorporating years of field experience, engineering development and international component partnerships. This represents the next evolution from the company’s first baghouse manufactured in 2015.

Brasco commissions expanded filter bag and cartridge manufacturing capability, further localising critical filtration components and strengthening control over production capacity, quality and lead times.

Brasco launches a dedicated multi-disciplinary Training Centre, supporting technical training, product knowledge, employee development and the Group’s growing reseller network.

Coolcare continues executing its national growth strategy by establishing operations supporting Mpumalanga and Limpopo, further strengthening its ability to support multi-site customers across South Africa.

The wider Brasco Group achieves ISO 9001 certification, establishing an internationally recognised quality-management framework across the growing organisation.