Once you’ve filled a drum or intermediate bulk container (IBC), how are you going to move it? Cornwall, UK-based Bespoke Handling Equipment (STS) has the answer.
Producing highly innovative materials handling products for numerous applications within the chemical, petrochemical, paints, inks, offshore and pharmaceutical industries among others, STS is enjoying ongoing growth despite the prevailing economic mood, even taking on new staff at a time when many others are shedding theirs. (Read More) “We put this down to the continuing development of specialist drum handling systems. Every time we come across a new drum handling problem we design a product to solve that problem. This new unit is then put into our standard range,” says technical sales director Colin Jones.
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In addition to serving the needs of UK customers, STS regularly fields orders from across the globe. Thus the company, which has just been awarded a contract to supply “a lot of drum handling equipment” for a new paints factories in Poland and Argentina, frequently sees its products destined for use in such diverse countries as the US, Israel, Australia and Kazakhstan to name but a few, with Jones commenting that “it has been interesting to see a lot of operators who used our equipment in the North Sea oil industry now asking for our equipment to be supplied to the Caspian”.
BUILT TO LAST
The company first hit the headlines in 1999 with the launch of the DTC01 Universal Drum Trolley, which allows an operator to move a 300 kg filled drum with a force of less than 20 kg. “We won quite a few awards for the DTC01 Drum Trolley, including the British Safety Industry Federation award for avoiding back injury and the BBC Tomorrow’s World Inventors of the Year award. This was some time ago but the product has continued to sell well. The main advantage of our trolley is it allows a drum to be picked up with very little operator effort. It also picks the drum up vertically and does not tilt the drum towards the operator. This makes it excellent for handling hazardous materials. The trolley is built of stainless and lasts a long time. We have been selling the trolley for over 10 years and have never known one that has been scrapped,” he says. Indeed, STS recently supplied new wheels for one of these trolleys that is still going strong despite eight years of continuous use on an offshore oil platform. “The standard trolleys they used to buy lasted six months in the salt spray environment,” he notes.
But the company’s product range by no means ends with award-winning drum trolleys, encompassing instead pretty much everything from drum dispensing cradles and depalletisers to drum tumblers and even specialised systems for the nuclear industry that can handle filled drums weighing up to 2,000 kg. Continually expanding its offering, STS has recently developed an IBC tilting unit “that provides an easy and safe way for operators to ensure that they can remove all the contents”.
Meanwhile, the company is also gearing up to launch a fully powered air-operated Ex stacker. “This will have power lift and power drive. It is designed to work in confined areas where it would be difficult and dangerous to other personnel working in the area. For instance, if an operator wants to pick up a 1,000 kg pallet of vessel and needs to move it across the floor it will require a push-pull force to get the unit moving of 60 kg. This is difficult to do and does not comply with the Manual Handling Regulations. Our power drive unit can move this with no effort. The unit is compliant with the ATEX Regulations and only requires the minimum of maintenance. There is no truck currently on the market that can do this and the price is very attractive compared to a Zoned electric version,” he says.
BESPOKE DESIGNS
With the company “driven by problem solving”, some 44 per cent of its sales come from bespoke designs. “When customers contact us for a solution that we do not have a unit [for], we ask for as much information as possible so we can fully understand the requirements. We then start working on a design. This culminates in us providing the customer with some 3D solid model drawings of the proposed unit and a detailed specification and fixed price,” Jones explains. “In the UK we have been offering customers our bespoke units on a sale or return basis. Over the past three years we have had a 98 per cent sales success after a seven-day trial period. The 2 per cent of specials we did not sell were all to companies who we had not visited or the process was changed. We are still very pleased with the 98 per cent success rate.”
“Our equipment,” he says, “is the most versatile on the market. For instance our DRU01 Drum Rotator will pick up and tip any size of drum from 50 litres to 205 litres, steel or plastics. Our competitors still think that all drums are 200 litre size.”
For More Information Please Visit:
www.sts-trolleys.co.uk
