Kinder & Company offers a comprehensive range of belt conveyor hardware stock in Australia. The boom in the resources sector is undoubtedly a positive thing for Australian industry, but it does potentially bring with it the inherent problems of labour shortages and long lead times for equipment supply.
While it is good to hear that companies supplying components and replacement parts to the mining and resources sector all have full order books, this is often accompanied by unavoidable long delivery lead times. This is an issue that not only affects this buoyant industry sector, but one that can also have a roll on effect to many other industries which use the same components, such as quarries and bulk handlers.
As with mining and resources, which is often the heart of many other industrial processes, there can be any number of conveyor systems. Without the continuous ability to move product quickly and efficiently from process to process, an entire operation can grind to a halt, causing very costly downtime.
While conveyor breakdowns can never be completely eliminated, they can be kept to a minimum with proper preventive maintenance. However, with the shortage of skilled engineering labour, planned maintenance is often one of the casualties of a boom.
So with both these factors at play in today’s industrial markets, how can costly conveyor downtime be minimised?
Over more than 20 years servicing the bulk materials handling industries in Australia, Kinder & Company supports these industries with highly skilled, experienced staff and customer service.
As Managing Director, Neil Kinder, explains, “we have always encouraged our customers to keep their own stocks of essential conveyor components and many conveyor operators understand the importance of replacing stocked items before their inventory reaches a critical level. Now, by offering a comprehensive range of stocked conveyor hardware, we can ensure that our clients can maintain their own inventory in a timely manner, without the worry that a critical component is on backorder.”
To further support its clients’, Kinder & Company provides maintenance inspections by experienced service personnel whenever requested by the client; these maintenance inspections are useful to identify which components should be maintained as critical spares, in an effort to minimise conveyor downtime in the event of a breakdown.
But even with good preventive maintenance systems in place, in today’s “must have now environment”, it is inevitable that at some point a component will be required by a conveyor operator that they don’t have in stock, which will need to be urgently sourced.“It is in these situations that clients really put us to the test” says Neil Kinder. “But while we don’t encourage our clients to totally rely on our ability to fulfil every order from stock, having a comprehensive range of belt conveyor hardware stock available in Australia certainly provides a safety net on many occasions.”