There’s no shortage of seasonal activity at Walla Walla’s Kotzur Pty Ltd and despite some strong overseas competition the business is in full swing in an effort to meet customer harvest deadlines across the nation.

Kotzur’s general manager Dean Glanvill said the work being performed ranged from small 50 tonne farm silos through to large storage and handling facilities catering for tens of thousands of tonnes of product.

“We’ve got major projects underway in Queensland, NSW, Tasmania and WA and even with competition in the sector from international suppliers we’ve still managed to continue to grow the business over the past decade.”

The engineering, drafting, project management, production and site installation teams at the bulk solids storage and handling specialists now number more than 100.

“We can cater for people with a wide range of skill sets,” said Mr Glanvill.

“Our production team includes welders, machine operators, silo assemblers, mechanics, materials handlers, and stores people, while our office houses engineers, drafting personnel, sales people, estimators, project managers, and finance and administration staff members.”

During the 2017 financial year Kotzur made the decision to form Kotzur Maintenance Services (KMS), a standalone servicing and maintenance division focused on assisting participants in the bulks solids storage and handling sector.

KMS provide reactive, proactive and predictive maintenance services and have recently entered into contracts with key players in the industry.

“We had considered the idea for a number of years and tried to provide the service through our site installation teams but this was only distracting them from an already significant workload,” said Mr Glanvill.

“During the last year we bit the bullet and appointed a well credentialed manager to head up the division.”

The maintenance division currently has three in-house technicians on the ground, two in Walla and one out of Kotzur’s sister company, Kotzur Bulk Solids Handling, in Toowoomba.

“Strong enquiry from clientele across the industry means that KMS has a solid pipeline of work ahead and this is without us really understanding the potential workload over the coming harvest season.”