Business coming leaps and bounds thanks to economy rise
Six months under new ownership and they now have 125 employees with 10 apprentices
Business
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MINING Equipment Maintenance has been in the Rockhampton community for more than 20 years and now they have recently celebrated six months under new ownership.
The business has now grown to 125 employees, including 10 apprentices.
It was founded in 1996 to be a one-stop-shop for not just the mining industry but all forestry, power generation and agriculture.
Director and general manager Scott Lawrence owns the business together with two other investors and said he is very proud to have grown the business to where it is now in just a short amount of time.
"We are focused on improving and growing our business to something that Rocky is quite proud of as a local company,” he said.
"We're very diversified and we work on highway trucks, normal vehicles, cars and right through to big mining equipment.
"We have full field service capability with staff out in the field as boilermakers, fitters and servicemen and we run a large fleet of trucks and vehicles.”
Part of their business structure is training their apprentices through their own programs and studies.
"That helps alleviate the shortage of qualified tradesman down the track,” Scott said.
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From their last intake of new staff, Scott said he is finding it a bit harder to employ qualified staff.
"It is starting to get tighter to be able to employ people quickly and it's taking longer to find the right people with the right skills,” he said.
"We tend to find some very good quality tradesman in the area.
"The last cycle in the mines created a lot of apprenticeships whereas there hadn't been many apprenticeship in the last eight to 10 years.”
Looking to the future, Scott said MEM has plans of expanding further into the underground side of things in the mines.
"We have started taking on more underground equipment and we want to focus on growing our highway truck department with servicing, repairs and maintenance,” he said.
Good footing is also gaining for a rise in the economy, as can be seen through the increase of field services, boiler making and fabrication requests.
The news of Adani Carmichael Mine is also great for a boost to the town.
"I know several people who have secured jobs with Adani already and they start in three to five weeks.
"Generally overall around town, around Rockhampton and the local area, not just mining, seems to have grown a lot in the last four months.... with a lot more requests from local businesses.
A Rocky born and bred man himself, Scott said it's great to drive around Rockhampton and Yeppoon and see things happening with the highway infrastructure and the ring road.
"Even the money that is even being spent on things like parks like Kershaw Gardens and Yeppoon Lagoon,” he said.
"It's really good to see all that happening and see something that has happened for a lot of years.”
MINING EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE (MEM)
- Parkhurst based workshop
- 125 employees, 10 apprentices
- Mining equipment repairs and rebuilds
- Light and medium vehicle rebuilds
- Heavy mechanical workshop for all machine, vehicle types
- Electrical repairs, chassis repairs, hydraulic component overhauls, certified rebuilds
- Cabin refurbishments to complete blast and paint
- Engineering and fabrication divisions, specialises in ferrous, non-ferrous material from access systems and shovel/dragline buckets
- Full sandblasting and painting facility on site
- Fabrication and design
- Field service division servicing Bowen Basin and beyond
- www.mem.net.au/
Originally published as Business coming leaps and bounds thanks to economy rise
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