Organisational Profile
Issue No. 39 - February/March 2008
Drought breaker in big demand
Compass Tanks was founded in 1992 when good mates Bindon Burns and Michael Pfeiffer set up a “little workshop” to fabricate steel rainwater tanks.
So it went for more than a decade before the drought bit and the boys from McLaren Vale found themselves in big demand.
Bindon attributes the firm’s overnight success to a “change of mindset right around the country” and legislated response that requires new houses to have rainwater tanks.
Bindon believes Compass has “a good 10 years” of strong demand ahead.
“Victoria is the hottest market,” he says. “There has been a big rush from Victoria and NSW. SA tends to lag three or four years behind.”
In 2006, after 13 years of operations, the little workshop at Mt Compass suddenly became very much too small.
“We bought a block of land 80 metres down the road and built our factory on it,” Bindon says. “We went from 130 square metres to 700.”
He says the expansion was “a must” because demand was not only much higher, it changed.
“We were set up to build round tanks. It would take us a full day to build a modular tank of any size by hand,” Bindon says. “We can do 20 a day now.”
Modular tanks and smaller round tanks flow interstate, but the big round tanks present a problem.
“Steel tanks are less robust than poly and until we can find a really good method for transporting them we won’t develop the market,” Bindon says.
Michael is in charge of the shop floor and drives quality control. Every month seems to bring a new expansion aspect – a change to the shop floor or new piece of equipment. Minor changes boost productivity: a new bulk silicone dispensing system means they no longer deal with used tubes.
Bindon says business advisor BDO recommended financing the tools needed rather than buying them.
“They said we needed to hold on to as much capital as we can,” Bindon says. “We need to buy...
