Austin Engineering Limited has continued to report strength in its order book across all its business units, with a notable uptick in mining bucket sales.

The current order book now sits nearly A$50 million ($36 million) ahead of the same time in its 2021 financial year, the company said.

Austin has spent the last 12 months developing and implementing the three phases of its ‘Austin 2.0’ strategy aimed at improving business competitiveness while also investing in new product innovation to align with customer requirements and demand.

The strategy’s initial stage incorporated a large reduction in business overhead costs – a process that has now been fully implemented, it noted. The second phase of the strategy was focused on implementing a step change in operations through the introduction of advanced manufacturing into select facilities. Advanced manufacturing is currently being implemented in Australia and also at Austin’s Indonesian manufacturing facility in Batam. Already, this approach in Batam, has improved business resilience particularly as Western Australia navigated through a period of COVID-19 restrictions, Austin said. The implementation of manufacturing process improvement is at an early stage and so will continue, through the 2023 financial year, to unlock further cost and capacity benefits, which will prove to be highly material to competitiveness, it added.

The third stage of the ‘Austin 2.0’ strategy was to invest in innovation and technology. Recently released products from this program, with updated and improved designs to meet customer needs, have benefited Austin’s sales through increased market share. These products include an upgraded ULTIMA truck tray designed specifically for the Australian eastern states market and the new JEC High Performance bucket range. Austin says it has sold more than 60 truck trays to the eastern states markets since the ULTIMA update was completed with a significant further quantity now being bid with several customers. In addition, the business has seen a big upturn in sales of mining buckets already at four times the sales levels compared to 2021 financial year.

Austin CEO and Managing Director, David Singleton, said: “It has been a rebuilding year for Austin and we are very pleased to have made highly significant and lasting gains across the business both financially and structurally. We have had a strong second half and the order flow sets up a good base and outlook for full year 2023.

“We are particularly pleased with the increase in sales and bid wins right across the business, which have been supported by our efforts to optimise the business under our ‘Austin 2.0’ strategy.”