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Made in Dandenong In the latest instalment of our manufacturing series, SPLASH! takes a close look at one of the big full line producers in the pool and spa market, Pentair. We spoke with head of sales and marketing for Australia and New Zealand Bipin Menon, Pool product manager Robert Sterland, and quality and warranty administrator Min Kim. ABOVE: Min Kim, Pentair Australia’s quality and warranty administrator at the Dandenong South facility. The production line floor space was reduced from 900 metres in the previous facility at Notting Hill to 420 square metres by increasing efficiencies and making the processes more streamlined
RIGHT: Product manager Robert Sterland with the newly designed Leisure Time wet end, the first major update in 25 years. They’ve increased the thickness of the material and changed its composition to make it longer lasting, while taking into account manufacturability, making the cycle time shorter through refinements in the tool itself including separation from the tool with greater accuracy and reliability 50
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entair is a mega brand with global revenue of $US4.12 billion (2022) and more than 11,000 employees worldwide across their whole portfolio. Originally founded in 1966 as a manufacturer of hot air balloons, the company quickly diversified, and in 2004 moved into the water business with the purchase of Wicor (Wisconsin Energy). As part of that deal, it also acquired Australian brand Onga Pumps, which had been established in 1967 and bought by Wicor in 1986. At the same time, another key pool brand acquired in the purchase by Pentair was StaRite pumps, which was founded in 1934, along with Jung submersible pumps and Nocchi agricultural pumps. In 2012, with the merger of Pentair and Tyco, the company also acquired Australian agricultural and fire pumps business Southern Cross. Pentair has many manufacturing facilities around the world, including Europe, Asia and both the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as Australian operations in Milperra in Sydney, Dandenong South in Melbourne and Murarrie in Brisbane. As part of this series SPLASH! went to the Pentair pool equipment facility in Melbourne, to check out their operations and discuss the role local manufacturing plays in their Australian business.
October/November 2023
Melbourne’s industrial heartland
Pentair’s Pool product manager Rob Sterland says that pretty much every one of their pool pumps made in Australia comes out of their Dandenong facility. “That is, made here or assembled here – it comes out of our facility and there is significant transformation,” he says. On top of the pumps, they also assemble automation equipment in Dandenong, and make suction cleaners in Brisbane. “Gas heaters come out of our factory in California,” he says. “And a lot of our cartridge filters also come out of our factories in the US – either California or North Carolina. We also have partners in manufacturing in China and have European facilities in Italy and Belgium.” Bipin Menon, head of sales and marketing for Australia and New Zealand adds that on the Onga side, most of the wet ends are moulded in Australia. Pentair own the tools and the moulding is done out of house by Australian partners locally in Dandenong. “That came about around 2008. We did a lot of injection moulding in house, and then there was a global divestment of the spa business and it was sold to Balboa,” says Sterland. “And that took a lot of the injection moulding volume, so there wasn’t really enough to support full time annual staff in injection moulding. So that was outsourced to local companies that specialise in injection moulding.”