Austin Engineering Limited has completed the first shipment of fully built and assembled truck trays from its Indonesia facility in Batam, which have been delivered directly into Western Australia’s Pilbara mining region.
The delivery comprised four truck trays that were shipped from Indonesia via Singapore into Port Hedland and then onto the customer site.
Austin recently completed a major expansion and upgrade of its Indonesian facility, which has doubled its manufacturing capacity to address increased demand.
The larger Indonesian facility is allowing Austin, it says, to mitigate the impact of ongoing supply constraints in Western Australia, particularly for skilled fabrication labour, which has been a limiting factor for production.
Alleviating these supply constraints has enabled the company’s local Western Australian facility to maintain more even operational output in line with local labour availability while ensuring Austin’s customers continue to have access to products, it said.
A return of freight costs to pre-pandemic levels has also enabled Austin to augment the shipping of sub-assemblies into Perth for final build (which has been standard practice for some time) with the delivery of full truck trays direct to the Pilbara.
Austin said: “The ability to ship directly from Indonesia to Port Hedland has the added benefit of removing the need for road haulage from Perth to client mine sites in the Pilbara. A reduction in overall transport and logistic requirements has safety, environmental and cost benefits. Specifically, a reduction in road haulage is favourable from a road safety and emissions reduction perspective.”
Further direct deliveries into the Pilbara are being planned with customers to augment Austin’s Australia-based supply, it said.
Austin CEO and Managing Director, David Singleton, said: “We are extremely pleased to see our design and manufacturing strategy starting to work in sync in the Asia Pacific region. The expanded facilities in Perth and Indonesia are allowing more flexibility from a manufacturing and delivery point of view. We have previously shipped truck trays, buckets and other mining equipment directly into Queensland, but it is the first shipment we’ve completed direct to the major mining centre of the Pilbara, and we expect this supply route to become a regular feature of our integrated supply chain.
“We remain committed to Australia as a manufacturing location, exemplified by our two factory units in Kewdale, Perth along with our two operating sites in Queensland. In addition, the majority of the steel we used in Australia and Indonesia is sourced from Australia.“