SPECIALISED APPLICATIONS CALL FOR SPECIALIZED SPECIFICATIONS AND THIS WESTERN AUSTRALIAN COMPANY IS FILLING A NICHE IN THE MINING AND OFF-ROAD SECTOR. DAVID MEREDITH REPORTS.
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n recent times there’s been a significant downturn in the up to 30-seat bus market in Australia. The rot started last October, with the sub 20-seat sector down 23 per cent compared to the same month in 2011. At the end of November, the same group was down another 32 per cent and the over 20-seat group had also fallen off a cliff – down 37 per cent. December 2012 was worse, down 40 per cent and 58 per cent respectively against December 2011. So far this year, these bus sectors are running 19 per cent and 39 per cent below the volume for the first four months in 2012. It’s no coincidence that such a marked drop has happened as the mining sector has gone off the boil. In the WA goldfields, widespread retrenchments have quietly gone ahead, even in the seemingly bullet-proof gold sector. The need for transporting the workers to the rock face has suddenly diminished, and employment contractors, as well as mine owners don’t have the desperate need for rotating their fly-in, fly-out workers on and off site every working day. But in the face of that dismal news, plus the savage cuts on the manufacturing front nationally, a WA company based in Canning Vale is frantically busy dealing with existing business and developing new products for this highly selective market. If you’ve visited WA recently, and behaved like an idiot, you may even have been a guest in one of their
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