GAST

GAST is a South African engineering, construction and specialist-materials group headquartered in Pretoria, founded in 1961 out of a chemicals business producing waterproofing compounds and industrial coatings. Under the Gast family — including Dr Kevin Gast, who became chairman in 1983 — the company grew from those chemical origins into a diversified international operation spanning geosynthetics (geomembranes, geotextiles, geogrids and clay liners), waterproofing, civil engineering, construction, mining-support products and water/wastewater lagoon systems. GAST holds patents including an early dam-lining and soil "plasticization" technology developed in the early 1980s, has completed more than 13,000 projects, and now operates in more than 30 countries.

Much of GAST's work sits in infrastructure sectors — water, sanitation, mining, agriculture and civil construction — where South Africa has a persistent shortage of technically trained civil, geotechnical and construction engineers and artisans. The company runs its own bursary and graduate-development programme, publicly listed on its careers pages, aimed at building a pipeline of qualified engineers and technical staff for its construction and geosynthetics divisions.

GAST's public materials confirm the existence of bursary and learnership offerings but do not publish specific terms; publicly available information doesn't confirm whether a formal work-back or minimum-service period applies to recipients after graduation.

Geosynthetics remains a niche specialism within civil engineering that few South African university programmes teach in depth, which is part of why industry-run training like GASTs matters for building the countrys pool of qualified practitioners in the field.