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Primary Sales Australia

BOOM TIMES

The relatively new owners of “Fabcast” at the time, it could be argued, may well have been content to see the business continue to grow from the stable base it enjoyed at the time with the foundry in one location at Bayswater, W.A. and the fabrication division at another, however, they decided instead on an aggressive approach to company expansion and began to do so rapidly.

An opportunity was seized upon to assume the Wembley-based offices and works of “M.B.P.” (formerly “Metters”), a huge complex consisting of a foundry and comprehensive works which even included a vitreous enamelling facility.

This premises was additional to the Bayswater foundry but it enabled the fabrication facility, also at Bayswater, to be re-located to Wembley.

With such a large amount of space available, the directors went about taking over a number of companies to fill the site with sufficient work to justify the whole exercise.

A company by the name of “Industrial Hangers Ltd.” (manufacturers of support systems for pipe work, etc.) was incorporated, which provided the presses with ample workload to keep them busy and then a company (brand name “Jalco”) which made a comprehensive range of wood-burning water heaters and slow-combustion heaters was taken over to add to the original range of “Metters” stoves which were continuing to be manufactured.

Many components for these products were required to be castings and, although these provided work for the foundry, the main demand came from centrifugally-spun cast iron pipes which were then also centrifugally cement lined and supplied under contract to the State’s water authority.

All this was additional to the agricultural products division which continued to grow because of market uptake of their innovative new products and the task of progressing all these areas of activity at the same time was a challenging time for all involved.

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