Austin begins manufacturing truck trays in Indonesia for US orders

Austin Engineering Limited announced the start of manufacture of the first truck trays in Batam, Indonesia, to support sustained expansion in Austin’s US-based business and its manufacturing site in Casper, Wyoming.

The ASX-listed company said in a press release that the Casper plant has shown significant growth in the last two years and has a healthy order book forecast through FY24. 

Austin’s manufacturing base in Batam will now produce haul truck trays and buckets for final delivery into the US to ensure the company has enough capacity to handle the planned throughput.

This step is in line with Austin’s declared plan to use its Batam operations as a “hub and spoke” production strategy to support expansion in its key international markets. 

Furthermore, to make sure it had the capability and capabilities to match this objective, Austin’s Batam site underwent a significant upgrade and enhancement.

Eight haul truck trays are among the first orders being manufactured by the Batam company for long-standing clients of the Austin US company, with further orders anticipated.

Larger truck body major subassemblies are delivered as “flat packs” in Casper for final assembly before being shipped to clients, and Austin said it intends to stick with this strategy going forth.

The orders also include two mining buckets, including a just-placed order for a dipper bucket. 

Austin said it believes that this method might be used to construct the bulk of buckets for this market.

“Our upgraded and expanded Batam operations continue to demonstrate their effectiveness in supporting our other global manufacturing businesses, from a production capacity and cost perspective,” remarked David Singleton, Austin CEO and managing director.

Singleton said the company already has a loan on Batam to support full and partial builds for the Australian firm, and that Austin is getting ready to accommodate order overflow for its US business. 

In order to meet customer needs and make use of current operations and final assembly partnerships, the CEO said Austin also has the option to ship products at various stages of assembly from Batam.

“Again, it is evidence of our Austin 2.0 strategy in play, giving the business flexibility to manoeuvre its operations to meet market conditions and customer requirements,” Singleton concluded.

Austin said it has decided that Indonesian manufacture and freight to the US provide a present cost advantage in addition to the capacity advantage for the US. 

For similar reasons to those outlined above, Austin claimed in April 2023 that it had successfully delivered completely manufactured and completed truck trays from Batam to Western Australia’s Pilbara mining sector.