CEO Update: A Message from George Yammouni

Colleagues,

It has been a while since I’ve written to you. I’m pleased to be able to keep you informed of the key activities at Headland and our reading of the manufacturing marketplace.

PMI

The Australia Manufacturing PMI rose to 48.5 in August 2024 from 47.5 in July, contracting for the seventh consecutive month. Some good news however, with export rates expanding the fastest we have seen in over two years. Incoming and new orders remained in contraction with overall sentiment reported by managers as “improving”.

In New Zealand, while still in contraction, the PMI rose to 45.8 in August 2024. Production is up two points and New Orders is up 3 points, the strongest they have been in a few months, with the former improving significantly from June. Employment is also up by 3 points to 46.6, recovering from the drop we saw in the June /July period.

People at Headland

Please join me in welcoming Garron Moir to our team, he is the newly appointed Service Manager for Vic, Tas, S.A. Garron is replacing Kevin Swartz, as Kevin continues his career with Headland and pursues a new career path in business development and Sales of sheet metal solutions. Garron will be based in our Melbourne office. Garron joins us from South Africa where he worked in Project Management and has extensive experience working as a client. So he understands the client perspective and is passionate about the client experience. He also has a deep understanding of CNC applications, Manufacturing processes, Press Tooling and Complex Project Management. He’s also a Qualified Toolmaker, his email is garronm@headland.com.au

We also welcome Alan Forbes to the NSW team in a CNC Technician role, a toolmaker by trade, Alan joins us with many years of experience in CNC technology and will be able to immediately provide additional technical support to our growing CNC team and clients, as we aim to keep improving the level of personalised care and expertise to all of you.

This month, we also celebrate and congratulate Micheal Piper’s 13 years at Headland supporting our clients in the South Australian region, whilst we continue to recruit for this important and growing market. We appreciate Michael’s dedication to continual learning and customer service.

We also celebrate 15 years of exceptional service and ongoing leadership from Samantha (Sam) Kloe, who joined us on Sept 20, 2009. In that time Sam has grown from leading all marketing activities to building a department, enabling significant company evolution, developing our OEM programs, becoming our resident expert in people matters and rising to a board position as a Chief of Staff at Headland. Congrats and thanks to Sam.

Finally, as we pause to celebrate people this month we also take a few moments to acknowledge extraordinary contributions to our industry. We are very proud of AMTIL’s award to Di Kloé as a trailblazer for women in manufacturing and AMTIL’s 25-Year Founding Member Award. We are very fortunate to have Di as an active board member at Headland, and we benefit greatly from her experience, wisdom and passion for all of Australian and NZ manufacturing, as well as her commitment to the advancement of important causes in our society. Such as Equality, Fairness, Diversity and Inclusion. Congrats Di !

Acquisitions, Expansion and Focus

You may have heard our exciting news that we recently acquired Noble Industrial Machine Repairs in Western Australia. This acquisition has enabled us to accelerate our market coverage in WA with 4 additional service technicians (for a total of 6 in WA) to support our existing and new clients. It also enables us to expand our portfolio of offerings through new agencies, new solutions, and some new OEM partnerships, whilst further enhancing the Service Experience.

In my recent travels and ongoing contact with many of you, some have also asked the very valid question of whether our focus is becoming diluted with expansion and growth. I want to take the opportunity to reassure all of you, that as we keep re-investing into the business and expanding our service capability, our commitment to existing clients and partnerships is unwavering. We demonstrate this commitment in real terms by ensuring that we build on our existing talent pool for each existing line of business whilst also adding new resources for new lines of business. And we measure the health of every business unit individually as well as client experience in all of our divisions individually to detect and address any concerns. We remain very mindful of the need for empathetic and experienced leadership in all locations and increased resources in multiple specialised technology domains. For example, our Sheet Metal Business Unit is our largest and oldest BU, and today it stands stronger with more technicians and more front-line customer facing staff than ever before. The same is true for our CNC division and the same is true for our Storage/Automation  team, as well as our Waterjet and Fabrication team. We have more Service Managers than ever before and more service Co-ordinators than ever before. And we are searching far and wide for additional Plastics industry service technicians … whilst deploying more modern technology and tools to enable and support our teams in all technology domains.

Our focus in the coming year is to fully reimagine what worlds-best service looks like. Which enabling technology (AI, Client Portals, e-commerce platforms, contact Centre solutions, Remote Diagnosis capabilities, Out-of-hours support models, and better access to service reports and case history for all of you). We are exploring all of these in detail. Especially Case Management and fewer touch points to make your engagement with us better, faster and of lower cost for you. We are also very determined to achieve and build upon a highly personalised and proactive service experience, with more service manager training, more engineer training, and a more proactive approach, which sometimes suffers as any company endures growing pains or introduces many new people to the business. However, we are unwavering in our commitment to listening and acting upon your feedback.  Many of you have given myself, Richard Kloe, and Andrew Waelen very valuable insights more recently, and I want to once again thank you for those candid and unfiltered gems and encourage all of you to never hesitate in reaching out to me with more input.

In closing, I wish all of you a successful Q2, and I look forward to speaking with more of you in the Oct/Nov period.

Kind Regards,

George Yammouni