The international aluminium smelter industry is important to Farra with our sales of Pit Maintenance Units into the bakehouses of these smelters and more recently our first sale of a Flue Wall Building Station, a related product into the same part of the industry.

 To further promote these two products we attended the TMS 2012 Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Orlando, USA in late March.  TMS is the professional society representing the minerals industry from engineering, processing and production and their annual meeting is strongly supported by the industry.  We had attended the exhibition in 2010 and were keen to return, particularly with our new product.

 The show was worthwhile and we secured prospects and important industry contacts, the latter being very critical to how the industry operates given the mobility of engineers and managers within the industry.

 We worked with a local company, Animation Research Ltd, to put together an impressive iPad ap that displayed our Pit Maintenance Unit at the show in stunning 3D graphics – as shown in the photo. A great combination of local industry.

David Shearer, the newly appointed leader of the Labour Party, along with Dunedin incumbent MP Clair Curran and newly elected MP David Clark visited Farra yesterday.  David was on a trip south to acquaint himself with companies and staff to better understand the issues and challenges that both face. Part of the rebuilding exercise he faces with Labour.

 It was good to have such a high profile delegation visit and for us to explain a little of our business to them.  They were impressed with the international success we secure in niche markets and they see it as part of the unheralded success that NZ manufacturing experiences. There are many similar manufacturing companies that are doing some pretty impressive things but very much under the radar of government and the public.  Given the impact this has in the economy it should be better recognised.

Maybe we will get our Minister of Manufacturing one day.

Photo courtesy of the ODT from article of today – see article http://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/196424/labour-leader-mission-re-engage

Speights Brewery has begun a major upgrade to increase capacity given the sad demise of it’s Lion counterpart in Christchurch. It is fitting however to see a major upgrade here in Dunedin given this is the home of Speights. 

 This upgrade programme will see a significant increase in production and will include a brand new turnkey automated brew plant – unfortunately outside our scope to provide.  But we are manufacturing five 33,000 litre storage tanks which will give them some much needed storage as their capacity expands. We will be delivery three of these in May and a further two in November.

It is great to work with such an iconic business here in Dunedin and be part of this important expansion.

We were very pleased recently to secure the design and build contract for two Flue Wall Building Systems for the Hydro Kurri Kurri  aluminium smelter in Australia. This machine is a building platform that features a sinking centre section where staff build new brick flue walls. After each line of bricks have been added the centre of the platform carefully moves down enabling them to build the next line at the same working height.  Once the wall is completed it is removed, the centre platform returns to the top and the process starts again.

 The critical feature is to always keep the platform on which the wall is built absolutely level. We will achieve this through the use of four interlocked mechanical drive systems, technology we are very familiar with through past projects.

 This Flue Wall Building System complements our Pit Wall Maintenance Unit, the former builds the walls, the latter provides access to those same walls when they are in use in the bake pits. Once completed we will begin marketing this unit internationally as well.

We have continued our recent run of success with our Pit Maintenance Units and have received orders for a further unit for the NZAS Tiwai smelter and a new sale for Rio Tinto Alcan smelter at Boyne Island in Australia.  This brings the total of recent sales to three when the unit for Aluar in Argentina is included and all three will be in the workshop together.

 The order for Boyne Island corresponds with an expansion and commissioning of their new carbon anode bake plant.  Interestingly for Tiwai it will be a replacement unit for the first one we ever manufactured, this one was jointly developed with the engineering staff at Tiwai 17 years ago.  Much has changed on the new models, but the fundamentals of the design are unchanged, testimony to a good original design.

The premium Engineering trade show, SouthMach was on in Christchurch last week during the polar blast that disrupted much of the country. Christchurch is not getting a fair deal these days.

We were there in force with a large stand featuring amongst other things our wind turbine caabilities, our personal brewery, the rotary screens and our general design  / fabrication skills.  Attendance was impacted by the wintry conditions and you felt for those whose exhibits didn’t even get to the show because of the conditions.  Overrall however we were very happy with the interest shown and, as is often the case, we were told regulalry that they just didn’t appreciate the breadth of our skills and capabilites.

We are excited to recieve our latest Pit Maintenance Unit order for the the privately owned and publically listed Aluminium smelter Aluar, in Argentina. This is our first significant sale into South America and reflects the growing appreciation the international smelters have for our product which combines high levels of safety with more efficient access to their carbon bake pits.

 We installed our first unit a number of years ago into the Tiwai smelter at Bluff and since then have succesfully installed them in most of the new build smelters throughout the world.

We have been having very good success with our Rotary Screens in NZ and decided to launch the screens into the Australian market at the recent Ozwater’ll trade show and conference from the 9th to 11th of May.

The show went extremely well with solid interest from municipal, mining and general industry.  We produced a working miniature screen in stainless and that caught the eye of the passing industry members enabling us to quickly portray our capabilities.  We are looking forward to our first sales into this (tough) market, knowing that our quality and pricing will hold us in good stead.

31st January, 2011
Due to expanding work loads our design division has employed Adam Ward (BE hons) to work with our senior design engineer Terry Pairman.
Adam graduated from Christchurch in 2006 and has had built up considerable experience working in Invercargill, Timaru and latterly Christchurch and will give the team a much needed boost of resources.