Terex Washing Systems show us their brand new Farlough Road facility
Based on the Farlough Road in Dungannon, this extensive new Terex facility includes a suite of brand new offices and a large new state-of-the-art manufacturing bay. Terex Washing Systems’ engineering, applications, sales, after-sales and marketing teams are all now located here providing a much more streamline operation focusing on their clients.
We talked with Oliver Donnelly, Terex Washing Systems new business line director “Our new office facility and manufacturing assembly bay was built throughout 2015 and officially opened in early 2016. It was specifically designed around the Terex Washing Systems product and is 50ft high, has four 20 tonne cranes, and covers an area of 23,000 sq ft. This huge new assembly bay allows us to assemble all of our wash plants under one roof and facilitates enhanced quality control and product testing methods. This operation means that we iron out any slight bugs or snags during the assembly process meaning that when the plant gets to site, the end-product is fully checked and tested.”
“In terms of manufacture, the cutting of steel, fabrication and painting process is all carried out very close by, at one of our other sites, meaning that all parts can be transferred quickly and easily to this new assembly facility, cutting the build time down as much as possible for our clients.”
“Since 2012 Terex Washing Systems has grown substantially and this new facility increases our capacity for production. We are currently running at around 50 - 60% meaning that we have lots of growth available for our business strategy moving forward, and 2017 will see us producing around 160 units here, with a growth plan to build over 300 units per year.”
“The important thing recently is that investment has been substantial from Terex, not only with this facility, but with Granville, a brand-new parts facility located around 5 miles away. The overall investment across these two sites has been in the region of £9m. Investing in people is also high on our agenda, and we intend to grow the engineering team, the applications function, and the sales force so we can reduce the territories for each manager meaning they are each closer to their customers and markets.”
“Investment in our dealers, and developing them technically is also key for us and this is now the role of Fergal McPhillips, our global technical business development manager, who specifically looks after our dealers and imparts as much technical knowledge and expertise as possible so they are much more proficient through the overall application sales process.”
“We have a very exciting new product road-map over the next few years, and this will make sure that we maintain our position as market leader. Coupled with that we are extremely keen to bring telemetry to our product range, expanding on our already in-depth on-board HMI, we want to leverage the detailed information and make it available to our customers, dealers and our own servicing team to give our clients a more efficient preventative maintenance experience.”
We asked about promotion of Terex Washing Systems product into 2017. Oliver explained “Next year, there will be a huge focus on customer open days. With fewer shows, we will be investing heavily in open days throughout Europe and the USA. With our equipment, it’s one thing seeing it sitting on an exhibition stand at Hillhead, but it’s another thing when potential customers can see our machines working, see the material going through, it means they can build up a picture in their own mind of how that would benefit their operation. This adds much more impact for us and we can spend more quality time with them to give them a true experience of the product.”
Paul McWilliams, Engineering Manager, then gave us a tour of the new offices and production facility “Here in our new offices, our applications team, headed up by Johnston Patterson, play a significant part in the business. Our sales team and applications engineers are very closely linked, as we have to make sure that we get the right solution for the customer. Our sales team always heavily consult with our applications team to analyse the material flow fully and come up with the right solution for each individual client. Our design team then get involved in putting the right modular elements and bespoke items into place on the wash plant.”
“In the production area we have four bays, an expanded parts facility, 50ft height clearance, and four 20 tonne cranes. These cranes allow us to lift complete machines and move them around the facility. We have footprints here to build two to three large machines or six to eight smaller machines dependant on their specifications. There are two fully opening doors, one on each end of the facility meaning that we don’t have to move machines past each other, it is more of a production line, making it much safer. Also, down the side of each of the bays, we have individual control panels which allow us to test individual components before they are assembled onto the final machine.”
“Through the investment in this new facility Terex have shown their commitment to these brands in the UK and Northern Ireland, and we are looking forward to increasing team numbers and producing more and more machines through here.”