While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic still hangs over Australia’s economy, the construction & infrastructure sector is currently enjoying highly promising conditions, creating big opportunities for innovative advanced manufacturing businesses such as New Touch Industries. By William Poole.

Few people get to see the results of their work out on public display on a regular basis, but for Brad Drury, Managing Director of New Touch Industries, it’s definitely one of the perks of the job . The company manufactured the stainless steel skins adorning the bridge columns on the EastLink motorway in Melbourne, with their striking laser-cut perforations. With New Touch Industries based in two sites: in Bayswater and Clayton, Drury inevitably spends plenty of time on the EastLink, and on seeing the bridges he acknowledges feeling some pride.

“Absolutely,” says Drury. “I think there’s 88 bridges all up. When my kids were younger, whenever we’d drive past the bridges, up near Ringwood or down near the Monash, they’d always call them ‘Daddy’s holes’.”

New Touch Industries has come a long way since the EastLink project was completed in 2008, but it certainly helped put the company on the map. Aside from its sheer scale, the project entailed cutting material to some highly exacting requirements, allowing the company to showcase its knack for overcoming technical challenges.

“We were a much smaller company back then,” Drury adds. “That was actually cut on our first laser. It required an oversized machine; it couldn’t be done on a standard ten by five machine. And we needed to be able to cut Rimex stainless steel with a PVC coating. Back then the machines struggled on Rimex, the PVC wouldn’t hold that well, so it would actually blow up and stop the cutting head. We had a few challenges around that.

“It was ironic the time and effort that went into ensuring there were no scratches on the panels for the opening day photos, yet driving past at 100km an hour you’re never going to see them. They went to a great expense to make sure they were pristine for opening day.”

Drury founded the company back in 2001, originally operating as New Touch Laser Cutting out of one factory in Bayswater, and the company saw significant expansion in the early years, opening a second branch in Clayton in 2006. In 2010, Drury diversified, starting a separate fabrication business, with Alex Vandenbroeck coming in as a business partner to manage it.

“It was a bit of an experiment and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, so we set up New Touch Fabrications as a separate, arms-length business,” Drury recalls. “But the customers embraced it and saw it was going to make their lives easier. Alex and I initially ran that business separately, and it was a real growth area.”

Eventually Drury was running four businesses across three locations: the two laser cutting branches, New Touch Fabrications, and a separate operation up in Townsville. After a few years of this, he decided to to consolidate the whole operation, getting out of Townsville and merging the laser and fabrication business, with Vandenbroeck becoming Drury’s partner in the merged business. Finally, the company rebranded as New Touch Industries.

In that time, the company has expanded substantially. From that first factory, the Bayswater operation has progressively extended along the street to occupy the adjoining five units – the site now measuring 130m long overall. Meanwhile the Clayton branch relocated to a much larger site 18 months ago, raising its capacity from two lasers and a press brake, to three lasers, a press brake and fabrication equipment, with room for more. Today New Touch Industries employs between 65 to 70 staff, with significant further recruitment underway. Indeed the business has continued to thrive despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been quite a growth period,” says Drury. “Admittedly, we ran quite conservative during the lockdowns; when people resigned we didn’t necessarily rush out to replace them. But both branches have shown good growth during this COVID period.”

Construction & infrastructure is just one of a range of sectors New Touch Industries services, including mining, rail, agriculture, aftermarket automotive, shop-fitting and general engineering – producing everything from machinery components to signage for Crown Casinos.

“We deal with an extremely diverse customer base,” says Drury. “Basically if it’s made of metal, we probably deal with it.”

Since the Eastlink, the company has continued its involvement in notable infrastructure developments, such as the rail crossing removal program in Victoria, the widening of Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge, and various gas and electricity projects, hospitals and police stations. It has supplied componentry for revolving restaurants in skyscrapers around the world, and has lately seen a COVID-related spike in work for the healthcare sector.

For Drury the challenges in these areas are similar to those in any of the markets New Touch Industries serves: “All sectors have their challenges, but in general, it’s the expectation to always deliver high-quality product on time, and cater for everyone’s different requirements. We’re not mass-producing widgets. We dispatch tens of thousands of components a day. Some will just be one or two, others might be 500. And we could be servicing to a hundred customers a day, all with their own unique requirements. That’s probably the biggest challenge, just keeping everyone happy.”

The key to overcoming these challenges, for Drury, is continuous improvement.

“We’re constantly looking at improvement opportunities, coming up with new ideas. If you’re sitting idle you’re going backwards. And investment in the latest technology is critical.”

In that area, New Touch Industries has just come through a particularly busy spell. It began around four years ago with the installation of a STOPA warehousing system, supplied by Headland Machinery. Drury had been struggling to find a system that met the business’ requirements for several years. It was only when STOPA introduced some design changes to its hardware that it became viable for New Touch Industries to proceed.

“That was a massive project,” Drury recalls. “The overall system weighs 600 tons fully loaded. We had to knock down walls between factory one and two, engineer a concrete slab that was 1.2m deep, 34m long and 12m wide – and all while we remained open. It was the best part of a six-month project. The guys from STOPA were here for 10 or 12 weeks doing the install.”

That was followed by a new Trumpf fibre laser cutter, again installed by Headland, which has been linked up with the STOPA system to enable more compact, efficient operations. Recently Headland also delivered a Timesaver edge-rounding and deburring machine. The Timesaver polishes laser-cut components, rounding off any rough edges and giving them a consistent surface finish. When working with mild steel, it also removes oxidisation from the laser cutting operation, allowing a better bond when painting or powder coating the finished part.

The next addition to the workshop is a robot welder, shortly to come into service. Built around a KUKA robot that New Touch Industries acquired second-hand, the team is currently constructing an ingenious new enclosure that will allow welding operations to run on one side of the unit while the operator can safely unload and reload on the other side, meaning the machine can work more or less continuously.

“We knew the history of the robot,” says Drury. “It had hardly been used. What we weren’t happy with was the enclosure. So I was visiting a friend in Queensland, who had just commissioned a robot welder with a cell he designed, and he was kind enough to give us the plans.”

Regarding future plans, Drury’s focus is on consolidation for the time being, building on the changes that New Touch Industries has brought in over the last few years.

“It’s been a huge four or five years of growth, capital investment and recruitment, so we just want to get back to what we do best: providing laser cutting and metal fabrication services to our clients, without the distractions. I think it’s just time for us to start getting all this investment and hard work we’ve done, and converting that into delivering outstanding quality service and on-time delivery to our customers.”

www.newtouchfab.com.au