Winch Hire opens NSW branch

The search for new premises in Sydney and revamping their website kept Winch Hire busy while the Queensland border was closed by COVID-19.

Proving the hire industry’s resilience against the pandemic, after two years of steady client growth spent supplying NSW projects from a distance, Brisbane-based Winch Hire Australia opened a branch at Guildford in March, near the geographic centre of the Sydney metropolitan area.

Its opening day followed 11 months of planning during the unpredictable COVID-19 lockdowns.

“It was a good time for me to really have look at the market in NSW and see whether it was commercially viable,” said Troy Moulder, National Sales Manager at Winch Hire. “Most of our clients in Queensland have operations in NSW, so it’s been a smooth transition for them to use us in Sydney.”

The new warehouse opened with a knowledgeable team onboard, at 182 Military Road, Guildford, which is close to Parramatta and 40 minutes from the Sydney CBD.

“When it came to staffing, we have been very successful, with Trent Sweeney as State Sales Manager NSW,” said Troy. “Trent has more than 10 years’ experience in the hire and rental game. Brad Cini is our Branch Coordinator and Hire Controller. He will oversee all operations in NSW. Brad comes to Winch Hire with more than six years of crane experience.”

Having large Sydney contractors on their books, including for the $955M Lang O’Rourke Central Station commuter hub redevelopment, gave Winch Hire good credentials for its new local presence.

“Our first hire was to Fredon Electrical,” said Troy. “We were delighted that Fredon jumped at the opportunity when we spoke to them about specialist supply of equipment at the Central Station Lang O’Rourke project. We’ve also had equipment go out from Sydney to Interflow. We have a long-standing relationship of more than 10 years with them.”

A new look online

It was a happy accident that a revamped website launch coincided with Winch’s opening at Guildford.

“The new website had been under construction for about six months, and we decided we would do all the photos of the equipment ourselves,” said Troy. “The team spent many hours going through pictures and touching them up. We engaged Jon Burke from Creative Digital Video to build the site and we are very pleased with the outcome. Jon was very much in tune with our marketing department and knew what we wanted.”

“I remember talking to Jon on the phone the night the site went live, and he asked me if I was playing around with the ‘request a quote’ tab, I asked ‘no, why?’ and Jon said, ‘because a request for quote has just come through’. We both laughed, as the site had only been live for about an hour and we were already seeing traffic.”

The COVID-19 restrictions had provided the perfect timing to update the website and the process keep staff occupied with a task that may have otherwise been delayed.

“Our team worked tirelessly to get the website to where it is today,” said Troy. “All the staff had input regarding how it would function, especially from a client’s perspective. It was just luck that the border restrictions were relaxed, and we were able to launch the new site and open our NSW branch at the same time.”

“With the new branch in NSW, it was always going to be difficult as we were dictated to by COVID, in a sense. We were lucky that Trent lived in NSW, he was our eyes and ears while we prepared equipment and had everything ready from IT and phones to signage.”

NSW marketing coordinator Angus Clark (L), and Troy Moulder (R) at the new Winch Hire warehouse

Tour the new Winch Hire Australia website and its impressive image gallery, at www.winchhire.com.au.