The International Resource Journal: Alltype engineering Services

Alltype engineering Services
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admin on 25 January, 2010 04:21:00
 
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