busnews.com.au April 2018 ABC^45Top:
After more than
60 years in the
game, McConnell
maintains a
strong presence
in bus seating.
Below:
An example
of quality
design and
craftsmanship.McConnell –
comfort and style
T
HERE’S A LITANY of
words that come to
mind when most
clients think about bus
seating and McConnell.
Comfort and support. Industry
leader. Safety and quality. Honesty
and integrity.
And that’s because after more
than 60 years in business this iconic
Australian company has forged its
solid reputation in the transport
seating game from epitomising
these qualities in everything it does
when it comes to conceptualising,
designing and delivering world-class
bus and rail seating in a tough and
competitive market.
ABC spoke exclusively with
McConnell GM James Lowe about
its new Melbourne production
facility, company expansion
and future direction in the local
bus-seat game.
“We’ve been at the new location
for a bit over a year now. We are
working out of a 15,000sqm facility
under one roof, whereas we came
out of Coburg working from four
separate factories, so we’ve been
able to streamline the operation
and get a lot more productivity out
of the factory,” Lowe explained.
“When you are working out of
multiple warehouses you lose that
efficiency, so it’s been refreshing to
get into a pretty modern factory
and the staff are loving it.”
He says McConnell is still
very much invested in local
manufacture. Its latest addition is
a robotic welding cell to better its
efficiencies and it’s also invested in
a CNC pipe bender. It’s continuing
to invest locally; its tooling is made
locally and the majority of its
suppliers are local, so McConnell is
setting itself up for the long term.
“The threat is always from
imported products, but seats
are a customer’s choice – a lot ofimporters bring in buses without
seats because they don’t know
the application or the client’s
requirements. The seats need
to be localised, so we think we
have a pretty good positon,”
Lowe explained.
“And that’s because of ADRs,
yes, but also even our non-ADR
route bus seats – we do a lot of
high-volume [route bus seats] for
most of the major operators, so I
think we are in a good position to
continue to service the bus industry
across the board.”
“Buses are the bulk of our
business, as opposed to rail, but
we did buy Loco Seats Australia
in Brisbane last year, which really
focuses on the rail driver seat
space, so we now have a facility
in Brisbane concentrating on
rail seat refurbishment – mainly
driver’s seats. So that’s a little bit
of diversification, which is not a
bad thing.
“Domestically, we are now
located in Melbourne and
Brisbane; we have about 60 staffin Melbourne and about 15 in
Brisbane. As everyone knows, the
Australian bus market is very insular,
so we have very long-standing
relationships with a lot of chassis
suppliers, body builders and
operators. We work well across the
full spectrum,” he explained.
“We are dependent on the client’s
satisfaction, though. Usually if they
are happy with our product they’ll
continue to buy, but if not then
they will look elsewhere. We are
really only as good as the last set of
seats we have manufactured and
supplied to the market.