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innovation terms of
the two-piece bucket
which eliminates
the stored energy in
buckets and the stair-
way access to the wa-
ter tank also improves
safety.”
As the company
continues to push
the envelope on in-
novation for improved
safety and efficiency
outcomes, a con-
scious effort is being It has been a significant year for Austin with the company celebrating 50 years in business,
made to gain greater while also making the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies 2019 list
long-term visibility on
the needs of customers and OEMs. lower revenue (minus 10%) as the ben- The company has 2,000 employees
Forsyth said having the ability to plan efits of restructuring operations in South and is already well represented in the
for materials and labour requirements America together with strong productiv- Americas (US, Peru, Colombia, Chile),
over a 12-month period, as opposed to ity gains in the US business delivered a South East Asia (Indonesia) and Austral-
delivering an order upon call, would help 69% improvement in margins. ia, with Forsyth and non-executive chair-
remove some of the “lumpiness” in Aus- Meanwhile, rationalisation of under- man Jim Walker leading the charge into
tin’s business. performing operations together with a new pastures.
A clearer outlook would help Austin weak second half for the Perth-based “We have a great footprint around the
move its business forward and expand company resulted in a 22% fall in rev- world in terms of high-quality manufac-
its market coverage and penetration. enue for Australia and earnings declining turing, located adjacent to large ore de-
In FY2019, earnings from the Ameri- 44%. Revenue from Asia grew 7% and posits in iron ore, coal and copper on four
cas improved by 52% to $12.3 million on earnings were maintained at $4.3 million. continents,” Forsyth said.
“We are quite comfortable with our
footprint in South America. We see our-
Austin is the world’s largest non-OEM manufacturer of buckets suitable for mining equipment
selves as a global sales organisation and
there is probably no immediate need for
extra bricks and mortar. We want to lev-
erage the facilities we have around the
world, we see probably growth coming
two ways; better coverage in some of the
areas we historically haven’t participated
in, Africa for example, there are certainly
big opportunities there.
“The footprint we have got we are
happy with and we are going to leverage
that. If we need more capacity we will go
to Austin-accredited third-party suppli-
ers that can build our products on time,
safely and on budget with high quality.
They are our core values, so we need to
make sure that we have quality partners
around the world to meet that need,” he
said.
– Mark Andrews

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT OCTOBeR 2019 Page 109