The shipyard cranes famous for mapping the skyline along the River Tyne in Newcastle are being dismantled and sent to India.
The owner of the Swan Hunter yard, Jaap Kroese, has sold off the heavy equipment to an Indian shipyard for an estimated £2.5m.
When he bought the yard 10 years ago he reportedly paid 40 times that amount.
Their final destination is the Bharati shipyard in Mangalore on the south-west coast of India.
Swan Hunter closed in July after the Ministry of Defence took an unfinished ship to a yard in Scotland.Plans to establish the yard as a breaking business did not come to fruition either.
Source : News.bbc.co.uk
June 2nd, 2007
Industrial supplies trade expands in Yakima Valley
Brian Guernsey, general manager of a new Fastenal Industrial and Construction Supplies on Lincoln Avenue in Yakima, works in the store Monday.
Tacoma Screw Products and Fastenal have battled for years to be the supplier of screws and fasteners for manufacturing companies throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Now the two longtime rivals have moved into the Yakima Valley to vie for business from the area’s construction, agriculture and public works industries.
They also are looking to grab a larger share of a nationwide $75 billion to $100 billion industrial supply market.
Tacoma Screw Products will have its first Eastern Washington store in Yakima at 711 E. R St. The company purchased the property from Chinook Business Park in October. The 61-year-old Tacoma company already has several Yakima Valley customers, and executives decided to open a Yakima facility after several months of talking to city and county officials. It has been interviewing applicants for seven sales positions and expects to open by early April.
“We are in expansion mode. We are looking for communities that are growing and that have the kind of customers that we traditionally serve,” said John Wolfe, Tacoma Screw Products’ executive adviser. “And Yakima fits very nicely into that model.”
Meanwhile, Fastenal Industrial and Construction Supplies, a Winona, Minn.-based company with more than 2,000 locations worldwide, has supplied fasteners and other hardware in the Yakima Valley for several years. It’s been in Union Gap for about five years and opened a second location in Sunnyside.
Its new Yakima store, at 516 W. Lincoln Ave., will serve customers from Yakima to Cle Elum.
“We want to be out there next to the customer,” said Robert Brown, Fastenal’s district manager who oversees 11 stores in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. “We want to help them grow. If they grow, our business will grow.”
Manufacturing’s recent economic rebound has provided the industrial-supply trade with new business, said John Buckley, executive vice president of the Industrial Supply Association, a trade organization.
Although the industry supplier’s customer base is smaller than it was during manufacturing’s heyday, many companies are expanding, increasing the need for such suppliers as Tacoma Screw Products and Fastenal, he said.
And they are working to keep that customer base. Both firms agree that good customer service will separate successful industrial suppliers from the rest.
Brown, Fastenal’s district manager, said the company offers several services, including one that helps customers maintain inventory and reduce supply costs.
“In the nation, that whole (industrial supply) market is huge — nobody has a large portion of that pie and the main reason is that there’s a diverse amount of suppliers,” Brown said.
One of Tacoma Screw Products’ services is maintaining a complete product inventory at all its facilities. No matter how specialized the part, Tacoma Screw will have it in stock, Wolfe said.
“If a customer has a very expensive piece of machinery and they need that fastener, it’s not good customer service that we can have it for them in three days,” he said. “We want it in the back room, so they can get the equipment fixed and back in operation.”
And that’s good news for Yakima Valley’s industries, such as construction, which has experienced rapid growth last year.
Often contractors need a specialized part and have to order it elsewhere, said Brian McGuire, central district manager for Associated General Contractors of Washington.
Getting the part locally will save time, he said
“I think there’s a need for a variety of industrial-type fasteners,” McGuire said. “It’s good for the contractors to have more choices.”
By MAI HOANG
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
Source:Google News
February 10th, 2007
The shipyard cranes famous for mapping the skyline along the River Tyne in Newcastle are being dismantled and sent to India.
