Top 100 CEO Interviews
Issue No. 37 - October/November 2007
Plenty in the pipeline
National piping enterprise Fibrelogic is a young giant that demonstrates the power of one.
It was founded in 2002 when sales manager Martyn Manuel, purchased fibreglass pipe winding equipment from his former employers.
It looked like a management buy-out; when Martyn bought the plant, the company was struggling for sales and survival, but under his direction 10 staff quickly increased to 45 with solid sales contracts.
Revamped business systems, IT and marketing gave Fibrelogic a new lease on life. In 2004, Martyn won multi-million dollar government funding to help set up a new fibreglass (GRP) pipe manufacturing facility in Adelaide.
He also bought a licence for Flowtite piping technology from Amiantit, the world’s largest GRP Pipe manufacturer, and two new continuous GRP Pipe winding machines. This tapped in to worldwide technology support and networking with 17 other Flowtite plants.
Flowtite is a world leader in corrosion-resistant water and sewer piping.
Martyn’s go-ahead sales method and the Flowtite offering brought on explosive growth of the back of widespread infrastructure renewal.
“We have had four or fivefold turnover growth this year,” he says.
“Our main pipeline project in Queensland — about 70km of 1m diameter Flowtite pipe ordered — is the main project we are working on.
“We have lots of growth statistics we can quote, but the key is that everything has grown.
“We have also tried to do everything as well as we can and - to the credit of our management team and staff - we have achieved such a high level of performance, beyond all expectations.”
A committed Christian, Martyn says the main areas he focuses on, and tries to focus his team on, are ethics in running the company, effeciency, enjoying what they do and “grow, grow, grow”.
“Cashflow has been the largest issue to deal with,” he says, “especially as we are continuing to grow and...
