AW Fraser Blog

Busy Times at AW Fraser

Since I last wrote a blog, we have been experiencing the full weight of the global recovery and we are now scrambling to increase capacity while keeping costs under control and utilizing the base efficiencies we created when we were quiet last year. There are plenty of quotes floating around in world media and in our customers' own press releases about how the recession has actually been good for companies in that it allowed us all to trim waste and develop systems. Personally, I think we could all have done without it, but it is worth reporting on some of the advances we have made.

In this blog, I am focusing on our engineering expertise, particularly one of our skilled technical staff, Jody Tuckwell who is from the UK. This story is an allegory for the success of New Zealand. We are mostly an immigrant country and we are lucky that the beauty of our country, combined with a strong innovative spirit and good breweries keeps people like Jody coming here. He is an innovative engineer and has been instrumental in improving our capabilities, most recently with internal grooving on large bearings. This is keeping us competitive with low wage economies and helping us to expand the types of products we can offer our clients and also allowing us to access more clients. He is also a humorous individual and has been prompting me to write this blog! It is worth noting that the Machine Shop Technical Manager Steve Moss is an excellent UK import as well, while we have a kaleidoscope of nationals working throughout our plant, most of whom improve the national gene pool.

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Hollow Brass Our Speciality

At AW Fraser, we specialise in the manufacture of high quality extruded brass product up to 3 inch diameter. We have an extremely experienced extrusion plant team and a wide range of dies manufactured over many years. We have the ability to customise the extrusion process for individual customers and work hard with our die providers to keep those customisation costs low. All that and we manufacture 100% locally.

Where we can be very competitive is in small runs (as low as 150Kg if required) and in hollows and sectional work. Generally our leadtimes are within 3 weeks and we have the ability to rush urgent work. Material Test reports can be provided if and when required. For a list of alloys available, please see the data sheet.

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Capacity Planning Post Recession

I have been writing for the past few weeks about the wildly swinging copper market and the recession recovery which is clogging up our production with urgently needed items. This is continuing to affect us deeply with competition for scrap copper driving prices up and the urgent production figures growing with each passing day.

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Bronze Component Orders Go Crazy

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that orders for Aluminium Bronze and Tin Bronze components have increased and we were experiencing strong demand. That situation has increased for us and we are now experiencing very strong demand, particularly in the Bronze Gear Blank and Bronze Bearing markets. As the lead-times stretch out, we are working to quickly improve output as much as possible with the resources we have on hand, but we are also looking to re-hire staff in an effort to produce a 30% lift in productivity.

One of the questions any salesperson will get asked is what they expect to happen in terms of demand over the coming period. We certainly predicted a rise in volume, but had anticipated that the ramp-up would occur over a longer period. Given the global situation over the last 18 months, it is just too hard to see if the rise in demand is sustainable or if we are headed for another dip (we certainly hope not).

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Wild Copper Week

As I sat down to write last week's post, copper was sitting at US$6854/t, stayed there more or less for 3 days and plunged 10% by the end of the week to 6242/t.

From a customer point-of-view, I hear the cheers as you all expect your bronze bushings, aluminium bronze gear blanks and brass extrusions to plunge in price. Certainly, that will happen, but it is not quite as immediate as many people think it will be. The mechanisms and behaviours behind radical copper price changes have a strong effect on bronze foundries who mostly buy copper from scrap dealers as raw material for their production.

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