Breaking New Ground

Smiley Monroe will be breaking new ground in more ways than one at ConExpo-Con/Agg in Las Vegas. On top of exhibiting independently for the first time at the Western Hemisphere’s largest construction show, the family-run company is also embracing the latest technology on their outdoor booth, to give visitors a truly immersive product experience.

Following success in 2016 at bauma Germany and the UK’s Hillhead Show, Smiley Monroe will showcase their ‘endless’ conveyor belts and custom rubber parts – their core product offering for the North America market, where the company has continued to grow its exports to OEM customers in the mobile ‘portable’ equipment sector.

Investing in the Future
Vaughan Monroe, Managing Director and co-founder of Smiley Monroe explained: “Despite all the uncertainty out there, we’re investing heavily for continued growth and we’re anticipating an exciting year ahead. I’m particularly looking forward to having conversations with our customers at ConExpo about how the USA’s planned infrastructure investment will positively impact all our businesses - and with the strength of the dollar against sterling, Smiley Monroe represents even better value today to its North America customer base. At ConExpo 2014, we began to explore the feasibility of a US hub and with guidance from Invest Northern Ireland Americas, I’m happy to say that we’ll be unveiling our plans in the coming months.”

Explore Your Own Way
Tim Monroe, Smiley Monroe’s Marketing Director told us: “Our applications experts and experienced problem-solving engineers will be well equipped to communicate the benefits of Smiley Monroe’s product offering for the North America market, using not only physical, but virtual displays, comprising 3D demonstration videos, interactive product animations and a virtual reality (VR) pod. So, in the spirit of this year’s theme - ‘Imagine What’s Next’ - we’re breaking new ground in our own use of technology.”

“On our booth we’re offering visitors a more personal and immersive product experience, and for the first time, a self-service option, which means you can choose how to interact with us. Hopefully visitors will find it hard to miss our large scale graphic banners, proudly displaying our 2016 production numbers: 250 miles of ‘endless’ conveyor belts, the equivalent of 900 Empire State Buildings placed end to end, or enough to cover 3,667 football fields.”

Tim added: “We appreciate that not everyone has time to stop and talk or slip on a VR headset, and others just want to be able to explore a bit more by themselves, so on entering our booth, an iPad in each of four zones allows visitors to quickly browse our products and automatically email information to themselves and share it with their colleagues.”

On the Road
Chris Monroe, Smiley Monroe’s Global Sales Director told us: “At ConExpo our team will be focused on conveying to the market the unique selling points of our tried and tested

core product - ‘endless’ conveyor belts. We’ll be surrounded not only by our world class manufacturing customers, who rely on our conveyor belts and custom rubber parts’ quality and forecasting; but by their customers too, whose crushing, screening, washing and recycling machines rely on our products to do a real ‘job of work’ and keep the show on the road every day.”

Chris continued: “A lot of our customers are in Northern Ireland, where County Tyrone has a highly successful cluster of quarrying equipment manufacturers accounting for a remarkably high proportion, 40%, of the worldwide marketplace. That means names like Terex, McCloskey International, Sandvik, Telestack, Edge, Maximus, Anaconda, Portafil, Tesab and CDE Global. Beyond Tyrone and Northern Ireland, Smiley Monroe exports to European and North American OEM brands such as Keestrack, Metso, Kleemann and Astec Industries.”

New Sectors, New Products
In addition to producing conveyor belts and custom rubber parts for its customers, Smiley Monroe has also started supplying the environmental and road construction sectors with ‘Special’ belts – launched at bauma 2016 in Munich - having invested in new equipment and processes to customise ‘endless’ belts by adding features such as hot moulded rubber cleats, side rails and side walls to the belt’s carrying surface, to suit a customer’s specific application.
And new high pressure presses allow Smiley Monroe to manufacture heavy duty rubber wear liners for hoppers, which they say are exceeding customer expectations.

Are We Running? It’s Competition Time
As part of their ‘Giants of Belting’ theme at ConExpo, inspired by Northern Ireland’s Giant's Causeway, Smiley Monroe will be running a ‘Giant selfie’ competition on their booth to win an all-new Apple Watch Nike+. (There’ll also be a pre-show competition to name the giant on social media). Having posed with the Giant of Belting, busy visitors can relax upstairs at a charging zone with their hungry smartphone or tablet and literally recharge their batteries, while they take a
break from the demands of the show to catch up with the Smiley Monroe team and their ‘legendary’ hospitality.

Northern Ireland and India based Smiley Monroe is the global leader in the production of ‘endless’ conveyor belts and custom rubber parts for global materials processing equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the crushing, screening, recycling, washing, road construction and environmental sectors.

With almost 40 years under their belts and a passion for ‘Lean Manufacturing’ methods based on reducing waste across the entire business spectrum, Smiley Monroe’s reach is now global, with a new logistics hub in Lisburn for faster loading of exports to more than 40 countries worldwide – from the West of Ireland to the Midwestern United States.

Experience the Giants of Belting at ConExpo-Con/Agg outdoors on Booth #9105 in the Bronze Lot.

Associated Businesses

  • Lisburn, BT28 2EX