Jayben Group to manufacture the 150th Sewell Sweeper this year

Article Source:
The Advocate

A strong team of employees will allow Jayben Group to celebrate a massive milestone for the company this year.

The company will be manufacturing and selling its 150th Sewell TB2000E Sweeper road broom, just three years after manufacturing the 100th.

Getting through the building of so many machines is something that would not be possible without the team according to Jayben Group general manager Chris Johnson.

"Fortunately, we've got a lot of people including myself, who have a history of working for Caterpillar," he said.

"So doing the manufacturing work to get a build rate is something we know how to do and people in Burnie have a lot of experience doing this.

"It's a local team made up of North-West Coasters building this product.

"The people and the team doing the work deserve the recognition for the work they've done."

The toughest part of producing the road broom has been on the sales side "to get acceptance from the customers and prove we've got a good product."

The ability to provide strong sales support for it is an advantage that Jayben Group has according to the product manager Steve Blizzard.

"In the last four months, we've set up a dealer network throughout Australia because we're only a small team," he said.

"We've got some big companies involved, so what we've done is expand our sales network, so we're just supporting that dealer.

"So the dealer network is where the key is for our future sales of this product."

Product Manager Steve Blizzard with Sales and Marketing Coordinator Caitlin Besnard. Jayben Group is celebrating a milestone of the TB2000E Sweeper they manufacture, with the 150th being produced. Picture by Katri Strooband.
Product Manager Steve Blizzard with Sales and Marketing Coordinator Caitlin Besnard. Jayben Group is celebrating a milestone of the TB2000E Sweeper they manufacture, with the 150th being produced. Picture by Katri Strooband.

The ability to provide a personal touch as well as technical support within Australia helps strengthen those relationships.

"If they want us to go and demo a machine they've just purchased, we'll go and do the handover, and not many companies are doing that," Mr Blizzard said.

"We'll jump on a plane and go to them, like we did recently for Shoalhaven Council, they love that sort of thing.

"We've also got a very good engineering team here that if there are any issues, we work through them and get them changed.

"You can't go with an overseas company and say we need this and that changed."

There are a couple of ongoing challenges that Jayben Group is facing around the future of the sweeper is the ongoing cost pressure, and competing against imported products.

"We have to get better at manufacturing these products for a lower price.

"We need to use better technology and upskill the team to be able to perform and compete against imported products.

"Right now, we're only competing against domestic products and so in the future, we'd expect far more competition from imports, so we need to be able to match that."