Alltype engineering Services

The Future oF FAbricAtion in Auustralia

Alltype Engineering Services (AES) of Perth, Western Australia, was established in 1985, primarily to service the power generation industry. Since then, they have developed the business into a fabrication and installation company and now concentrate on the supply and installation of pipe work systems, structural steel and plate work for the water Industry, mining infrastructure and oil and gas industry. AES has come a long way and just recently announced plans to more than double in size.

colin heitMAn, ceo at AES, spoke with IRJ on a recent trip to Europe to tell all about how this company continues its pioneering growth with machine automation in the fabrication industry, and what it takes to grow from a medium-sized local company to become one of Perth’s next largest fabrication businesses.

Foundations for future expansion

Part of the AES strength stems from over 20 years of quality service and reputation-building. Heitman explains that today, the company’s main line of business is for the water and sewerage industry in Western Australia.

“It’s a business of well-established staff, it is well-systemised and has proven certified quality management systems,” he says. “Over the years, it’s built itself to be a reputable business with a strong background and we’re now at a point where we’re in the process of literally doubling the business in size.”

Heitman says that this expansion is not just in turnover, but in the premises from which AES operates, too. The company has recently acquired additional land which more than doubles its current site.

“We’re in the process of building new fabrication facilities and offices which will be more than double our current size, so the company is now positioned to go forward and do well off of what we’ve established in the past,” he says.

“What we’re doing is building off our footings now and taking advantage of the quieter times before industry recovers from recession. In Western Australia, it’s truly on its way. We’ve seen good recent growth in Western Australia, particularly in the mining industry.”

Perth is a growing city and continues to improve its infrastructure and water and sewage— the main part of the AES focuses today.

Automated steel fabrication processes

Heitman explains that one of the prime reasons why AES has decided to double its facilities is to allow the company to implement further automation of its steel fabrication processes.

“One of the reasons I’m in Europe now is because we’ve been looking at additional automated steel processing machinery to complement our existing machines,” he says.

“We established ourselves as a fabrication company that wants to work with automated processes several years ago by buying machinery that helps us to reduce manual labour required to process pipe and structural steel.”

In doing so, AES became the first fabrication business in Australia to go down the automated pipe processing route with a machine capable of processing pipe profiles up to 2000mm in diameter with up to 100mm wall thickness.

“One reason we’re doubling our premises is to allow us to implement further automated steel processing machinery—to allow us to be more competitive in the structural steel industry, which will support our prime business in pipe fabrication,” Heitman explains.

While the announcement of this vast company expansion may be quite recent, AES has been taking steps to put it in place for some time. Three years ago, the company built another workshop adjacent to its carbon steel workshop.

“We built that workshop to put in the steel processing machines. One was a robotic steel processing machine for structural steel, and the other is the pipe processing machine,” Heitman says.

“Now we’ve outgrown our premises and we want to continue to automate our processes and utilise best practises from around the world, hence we need bigger premises. We’ve been on a steady growth path and it’s still ongoing.”

Now this machinery is used in all of the work at AES, not only for a competitive angle but also to allow the company to produce steel structures more efficiently and with ensured high quality. The company continues to stay a step ahead of its peers, and now looks set to enjoy successful and sizeable expansion in the coming year. Heitman says that today, AES is focused on moving to its larger premises.

“Looking long-term, we want to continue to implement automated machinery to enhance the growth of the business,” he says.

“The business has been steadily built over the years. There are firm foundations for increased growth which we intend to do through the utilisation of our larger premises and automated machinery. We believe that this is the future of fabrication in Australia.”

For AES, the future certainly looks bright.

www.Alltypeengineering.coM.Au

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