Teaming up with Germans Weha has proved a formula for success for UK machinery and equipment suppliers Harbro – and for their customers
Weha, the major German-based machinery and tool suppliers, sell 20,000 products across 17 product groups, some of which they make in their own factories in Germany and Poland. They sell to 18,000 stone companies in Europe and the USA. That is the buying power Weha add to their British partners, Harbro.
The entire Weha range is available to stone companies in the UK and Ireland through Harbro, although it is not all stocked in their warehouse in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Even so, most of the products can be delivered in no more than two weeks.
Weha’s range includes an extensive variety of materials storing and handling products that make the environment for working and delivering stone both safer and more productive.
It was one of Weha’s safety products – their vibration absorbing pneumatic hammers – that first introduced the German’s name to British masons when the Health & Safety Executive, prompted by the tightening up of vibration exposure regulations from Europe, started focussing on hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) in British masonry workshops.
Günter Bär, who heads Weha’s exports, says the growth of products related to health & safety was in response to growing concerns in Germany, which were ahead of those in the UK. “Germany, with the Scandinavians, led the way on this,” he says. The response to vibration white finger was one of the early products, but many have followed since then to make the storage, selection and handling of stone safer and more efficient.
In the range is a vast selection of products to make it easier to lift and move stone, including Weha’s own range of lifts that include vacuum lifts, made in their factories in Poland and Germany. They also make many of their own materials handling products at Metal Jawor, a business they own in Poland, as well as their own bridge saws and bench saws at another eastern European business, Weha Tschechien.
Weha have also given Harbro sandblasting equipment, all kinds of fixings and a range of dust suppression and collection products, including a water wall.
Harbro founder David Appleton concluded the deal to represent Weha in the UK in 1996 after Weha approached him at the second Natural Stone Show in London. Geoff Bowles, who invested in Harbro in 2004 and is now the Managing Director, says: “They are our biggest suppliers.”
One of the star products from Weha is a trolley for carrying headstones across cemetery lawns. It was at Harbro’s instigation that pneumatic, rather than solid, tyres were put on the trollies so they did not leave grooves in the grass. A gantry for lifting headstones into place and removing them for subsequent additional inscriptions was also a response by Weha to a requirement from Harbro’s customers. “Input from our partners is very important to us,” says Günter Bär.
The largest growth in materials handling products has come from the kitchen worktop sector. Many of Harbro’s customers have moved into this side of the stone industry over the years and have sought products that make the manufacture, lifting, carrying and installing of worktops easier and quicker, not to mention how much more professional installers look when they turn up on site with products such as the Kitchen Sherpa pictured at the top of the facing page.
They have proved spectacularly popular in Dublin, says Geoff, where worktops have to be lifted up several flights of stairs to be installed in city centre apartments.
Also big sellers lately have been the ‘toast rack’ slab stands that companies are replacing ‘A’ frames with. Weha say they sell thousands a year in all their markets and Geoff Bowles says hundreds come to the UK. Fork lift compatible transport racks that make loading and unloading lorries easier are also growing in popularity.
As most companies have fork lifts these days, booms that convert the forks into a crane with a slab grab on the end of them (like the Kaiman pictured left) are also selling in increasing numbers. It is all making life simpler, safer and more efficient for masonry companies.
When Harbro introduced the Weha range of materials handling products to the UK in 1996 a lot of them were completely new concepts to the UK.
The constant development of the Weha ranges and frequent launches of new products such as the vacuum attached reinforcement carrying bars for worktops introduced at the Natural Stone Show in London last year has kept sales of the Weha products on an upward curve. “We have seen growth of the sales of Weha products every year since we introduced them,” says Geoff Bowles.
There is no doubt this year is going to be more difficult for Weha, especially as sales have dropped 70% in the USA, says Managing Director Stefan Deschler. Inevitably, the USA is an important market for Weha but not as important as Europe and although sales have fallen in their home territory of Germany, Weha still managed to see growth last year in Poland, Portugal, Austria and Switzerland, leaving them with overall growth for the year.
They anticipate that some of their customers will become victims of the recession this year. However, they have a customer base of 18,000 plus those they supply through their partners such as Harbro (and they have others in other countries). Stefan Deschler says even their largest customer represents only 0.6% of their turnover so they are not too worried about their exposure to bad debt.
“I think the main thing is that people don’t talk the economy down,” says Stefan. “It is better to say ‘yes we can do it’ than to say ‘everything is going to be awful’.”
He is confident about the future for the company started in 1948 by Ludwig Werwien and bought in 1977 by Kurt Aigner when they still only had 15 employees, rather than the 200 they have today at their 5,000m2 factory and head offices in Königsbrunn and the other factories and distribution centres they operate in Europe and America. However, it is in the east that he is looking for growth this year rather than in the west.
One of the reasons for his optimism about Weha is that it is still operated as a family business with the people working there proud to be part of that extended Weha family. It was because Harbro was run along the same lines that Weha approached them to partner them in the UK.
Stefan Deschler believes it is companies like these who are in the best position to survive the recession. He sent out sales literature in January to customers in Germany that said on the cover “We hear there’s a recession”, the implication being that they had heard it but had not experienced it.
“We decided we won’t be part of the recession,” Stefan told NSS.