Austin Engineering says it has received orders for, or been notified of award of, in excess of 210 truck tray orders in the December 2022 to January 2023 period, improving the company’s order book and revenue outlook for the second half of 2023.

The orders over the period represent approximately 40% (approximately 500 expected in the 2023 financial year) of orders received in a normal full year.

These orders have come from multiple customers across the globe and will be manufactured and delivered from Austin’s four operating sites located in the Asia Pacific (Australia and Indonesia), North America (Wyoming) and South America (Chile), it said.

Production of the trays is either already underway or planned to commence shortly, with most of the deliveries scheduled through 2023 but with significant revenue to be booked in the second half of the 2023 financial year.

Approximately 120 of the truck tray orders are for the recently launched, ultra-lightweight High Performance Tray (HPT). The HPT can, according to Austin, deliver significant additional ore per year due to its lighter weight and increased volume efficiency. In an early application, the truck body design could deliver an additional 45,000 t/y of ore per tray compared with previous comparable truck trays developed by Austin.

Austin expects the market interest in the HPT to continue due to its attractive design and operational benefits, it said. Austin has received several proposals to tailor the design for different geographies, suggesting it will become a mainstay in the company’s global product portfolio, complementing Austin’s existing four truck tray types.

Austin has previously announced manufacturing capacity expansions to deal with an anticipated surge in demand, which has now occurred. The expansions, now largely complete, were in Indonesia, Chile and in Western Australia, where a specialised bucket facility for Austin and Mainetec buckets has been commissioned.

Austin CEO and Managing Director, David Singleton, said: “The increased orders reflect an increased win rate in contracts across the business aided by the release of improved product designs such as the HPT, which is receiving significant market interest because of its attractive operational efficiencies.

“We had confidence to commit capital to capacity expansions at some of our major manufacturing sites, namely Indonesia, Chile and Australia. We have also invested in upgraded equipment in the workshops to enable efficiency and quality improvements across our product lines.

“Pleasingly, the capacity expansions have aligned with increased orders ensuring customer delivery timeframes can be maintained. The continuing and increasing strength in the order pipeline suggests that high utilisation levels in all jurisdictions will continue.

“We believe that our commitment to product design and development, our focus on cost control and developing capacity to meet our mining customer needs is driving this improvement in workload.”