Trojan showing growth amidst adversity
“When we started this business, we always set out to prove that manufacturing is viable in Australia and especially in the Central West,” said Steven Turnbull, managing director of local metal fabricator Trojan Trays.
But things have not been easy.For almost the entire the three years Trojan Trays has been operating new car sales have been in steady decline across Australia. Years of drought, the horrific bushfires over the summer, and then the withdrawal of General Motors from Australia have been huge blows for many in the vehicle bodybuilding industry.
But despite all this Trojan Trays had continued to grow — that is until the coronavirus pandemic shut down the economy. “The market was back a lot and then the first two weeks in April were absolutely terrible,” said Steve. “And we are not an isolated case,” added Steve’s business partner Greg Robinson. “Sydney, bodybuilders everywhere, not just us. They were doing it tough anyway and the dealers are doing it tough.” Faced with an unprecedented challenge, Greg and Steve got to work looking at ways to pivot their business and keep trading. “We had to make serious decisions about what we could do, we could either throw in the towel or do something different, so we had to do something different,” said Steve. “And we were in the room for days,” said Greg. “We thought we could make cattle grids, but then the cattle industry is doing it tough, we thought about hospital beds, we thought of everything.”
But then Steve had a conversation with one of their existing customers at Flick Australia. Flick has put a pause on buying new vehicles and so no new trays were needed, but besides pest management, washroom services make up a significant part of Flick’s business, and they had a job that Trojan was in the right position to fulfill. “They had just ordered 2000 units of these hand sanitiser from China. I had the conversation with them and we ended up doing a deal and took it on. Then they rang up and cancelled the order and swung it straight to us,” said Steve, who, two months ago, would never have considered the possibility their workshop would be full of hand sanitiser stands.
“They left it up to us. They just they said, "this is the unit we need to put on there, come back to us with your designs." Then we mocked up a few images, sent the prototype and made sure it was stable. We looked at the best practice from a perspective of surface protection and were able to secure some 95 to 99 percent antibacterial powder coat: It is a product they use for surgical beds.”
In the end, Steve said they were able to provide a better product, made locally in a shorter time and all for a cheaper price than the imported product. “We’ve got a current order for 2200 units with a future order for another 2000,” said Steve. “And we’ve employed four people in a market that’s down; we’ve employed admin, we’ve employed marketing people, we’ve employed workers on the floor to put those units together. So our workforce is bigger now than before COVID-19 and we are recruiting now for another fabricator.”
With the country taking the first tentative steps out of lockdown measures, Steve believes the next few years will see a stronger and growing local manufacturing industry. “Yes, definitely and it needs to,” said Steve, who has always made a point of keeping Trojan Trays’ business as local as possible. “A lot of people think we’re a franchise and that we import stuff, assemble it here and ship it out, but that’s as far from accurate as you could be,” he said. “We’ve never bought our steel from China, we are not reliant on overseas markets. We employ locals and all the money that comes in is locally spent, whether it’s on wages or giving to local charities. We are proudly manufactured in Australia.”