May 2009 was largely about consolidating the effort put in by our team over the past few months and I am pleased to announce our investments have started to bear fruit.
As reported in our last update, we have been contacting a number of builders throughout Western Australia and advising them of our steel wall frames and the Centrix / Goldfields Steel Framing alliance. During the month we were contracted by three new builders to build steel wall frames and there are a number of builders who have indicated their intention to use us in the near future.
Related to our steel wall frame division, we are finalising a R&D project on a building component that we intend to patent and commercialise in the near future. Our final process involves strength testing and provided the results are positive, we will move to commercialise as soon as practically possible given our belief of a current need in the market place.
In other R&D news, we have been addressing our modularised Industrial Fencing System to identify ways to reduce cost of manufacture (without affecting product integrity), to allow us to pass these cost savings onto our customers. The review has been successful, and by way of example, one simple adjustment to the manufacturing process will result in our ability to reduce cost of manufacture by approximately 4%.
We continue to receive enquiries from around the World in relation to our wireline winches. We are particularly keen on an enquiry to develop a 5,000 metre winch that we will explore in June. Through the Opportunities page on our website, we have also received expressions of interest from overseas parties to act as our overseas distributor of wirelines in North America and the Middle East.
Through the West Australian agency we hold with the Cevol range of steel pallets, we have submitted an expression of interest to supply 3,000+ stillages to the Gorgon Project. As Cevol is the largest manufacturer of steel pallets in Australia, we are confident we will be one of the shortlisted parties to provide these pallets.
We anticipate June will be another busy month and amongst other things we intend to:
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continue to market our steel wall frames and roof trusses to various builders;
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finalise the R&D project with respect to the building component;
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explore a couple of other iniatives with respect to wall frames and roof trusses that we hope to roll over over the next 2 - 3 months;
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continue to work on the equipment safety upgrade for one of our long standing clients (reported last month); and
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finalise an automation proposal for another long standing client (also reported last month).
John Miniello
Managing Director
The Centrix Group