Austin Engineering Ltd has commenced manufacture in Batam, Indonesia, of the first truck trays to support continued growth in Austin’s US-based business, and its manufacturing facility in Casper, Wyoming. The Casper facility has seen substantial growth over the last two years and has a strong order book outlook running into FY24.

To ensure that the business has sufficient capacity to meet the projected throughput, Austin’s manufacturing hub in Batam will build haul truck trays and buckets for final delivery into the US. This move aligns with Austin’s stated strategy to employ a ‘hub and spoke’ manufacturing approach using its Batam operations to facilitate growth in its major global markets.

Austin’s Batam facility underwent a major upgrade and enhancement to ensure that it had the capacity and skills to meet this strategy. The initial group of orders being manufactured by the Batam business comprise:

• Eight haul truck trays for existing and long term customers of the Austin US business, with further orders expected
• Major sub-assemblies for larger truck bodies delivered as ‘flat packs’ for final assembly in Casper for onward shipment to customers. Austin expects to continue this approach in the future
• Two mining buckets, which includes a recently announced dipper bucket order

Austin anticipates that the majority of buckets for this market could be built in this way. In addition to the capacity advantage for the US, Austin has also determined that Indonesian manufacture and freight to the US provides a current cost advantage.

In April 2023, Austin announced that, for the first time, it had delivered fully built and assembled truck trays from Batam to Western Australia’s Pilbara mining region for reasons similar to those described above.

Austin CEO and Managing Director, David Singleton, said: “Our upgraded and expanded Batam operations continue to demonstrate their effectiveness in supporting our other global manufacturing businesses, from a production capacity and cost perspective. We’ve already lent on Batam to support our business in Australia with full and partial builds and we are now preparing to support our US business with order overflow. From Batam, we also have options to ship products at various stages of assembly to meet customer needs and utilise our existing operations and final assembly partnerships.”

He adds: “Again, it is evidence of our Austin 2.0 strategy in play, giving the business flexibility to manoeuvre its operations to meet market conditions and customer requirements.”