Exploiting the economic boom
The construction industry is bursting at the seams, not only in housing projects and shopping centres, but also in industrial construction clearly evident from the number of warehouses mushrooming along the highways around Gauteng. Racking and shelving manufacturers are smiling and while the going is good, those who grab the opportunity to extend services are bound to reap the benefits of the economic boom.
The guys at Acrow saw this coming and not only extended the racking and shelving manufacturing capacity, but also ventured back into manufacturing scaffolding and formwork for the construction industry; literally killing two birds with one stone. “Supply Chain Today” met with John Catchpole of Acrow to talk about new directions the company is venturing into. “We used to do scaffolding a few years back, but lately we've been overwhelmed with enquiries because the brand remained strong and we decided to revive that capability,” he says. “With the extension of our racking manufacturing and now including the manufacturing of scaffolding with all its accessories, we had to get extra space and are now setting up the manufacturing plant at new premises of 30,000 m² just down the road.”
Cashbuild stores
Amidst all this change, manufacturing continued relentlessly with the company celebrating the complete fitting out of their 150th Cashbuild store at Umtata East, John says “With the concept of getting building materials and hardware right to where people need it, these stores are also spread out in remote rural areas where a donkey cart is often the mode of delivery transport for getting the materials to where people are building. The rural stores vary in size from 900 to 1200 m² while the urban ones are around 1600 m². Originally the racking and shelving was a speciality design specific to their products, but with the volumes we're now doing it has become pretty standard in terms of our production line and we're proud to say that we grow with our customers, like Cashbuild, to such an extent that their every need is met with enthusiasm.”
Into Africa
For these Cashbuild installations, including one in Lesotho, Acrow's crew takes all the racking and shelving material to location where they do the complete installation, but when orders come from further afield such as the Game stores they're doing in Malawi and Tanzania, Acrow supplies all the racking materials while Game's installation team does the shop fitting. “Depending on whether it is rainy or dry, like now, we either take everything up by road or otherwise ship the packed container to a port closest to the destination,” says John. “In Game's case we also had to do a bit of specialising in terms of the racking they required, but again the volumes justified it for us.”
Doubling space
At today's property prices optimum floor space utilisation is of the utmost importance and one way of achieving this is to install mezzanine flooring. With an installation for a bicycle manufacturer, Probike, the floor space was literally doubled in a 2800 m² warehouse to also turn it into an assembly plant. “We have an alliance partnership with Rosss in Italy and the sizes they make suited this installation particularly well, so we did their entire floor with Rosss flooring in spite of us making a similar type of flooring,” explains John. “The mezzanine floor carries all the knock down parts imported from Asia and these are transferred down through hatches and openings in the floor to an assembly line on the lower floor either by forklifts or hoists. At the end of the assembly line the complete bicycle is stored in racks for drawing off on orders.”
Scaffolding
Expansion into the scaffolding business has brought Acrow's staff up to 165 people including the branch in Cape Town and the UK while plans for a branch in Durban is in the pipeline. “We're now finalising the last tooling in order to produce all the jacks and panelling necessary to offer a full range of scaffolding and formwork for selling as well as our own rental pool,” says John. “Although it is standard scaffolding compatible with everything else in the market, our equipment is manufactured to the stringent quality control we've become known for.”
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