FITT Resources Celebrates 10 Years of Growth and Service
FITT Resources is celebrating our tenth anniversary in July 2018, and we have a string of milestones and achievements in that time of which we are immensely proud. From our early days in Castle Hill in NSW with only 13 people on the staff, we have grown and diversified over the past decade to the stage where we now have a workforce of more than 40, workshop and warehousing facilities in two states, and are able to provide one of the most complete rotating equipment and static equipment services in Australia.
FITT Resources first opened its doors in 2008, when we purchased the Chesterton Australia direct operation from the US, and began supplying their mechanical and polymer seals, mechanical packing and gaskets to a variety of industries across Australia. At that time, we were primarily concerned with industrial sales, but we increasingly saw the need for a tank-to-tank offering and specialised pump repair and refurbishment services.
The FITT Resources Reliability Centre at Lisarow.
To meet this need, we purchased a small service company, and the business that we now know as FITT Resources began to take shape.
There have been a number of significant milestones over the past decade that have seen us grow to become one of Australia’s preeminent names in the rotating and static equipment industry. Amongst the most important has been the creation of our corporate divisions: Water Industry Services; Dewatering Equipment; Fluid Sealing; Turbo Machinery; Pumps & Servicing.
Water Industry Services, headed by Richard Arthur, specialises in asset reclamation in the wastewater industry and provides a comprehensive range of water industry products and water services right across Australia, including water asset repair and refurbishment, and the installation of both new and refurbished equipment. This is a sector in which we are constantly seeking to employ new technologies and methods, and one of the most significant developments that we have made in water industry services recently has been our utilisation of Mr Manhole technology for the repair and refurbishment of manholes.
Our Dewatering division came about when Chris Malloy came onboard and FITT Resources became the sole Australian distributor for Grindex pumps. The growth and success of this specialist division has meant that we have been able to secure further sole Australian and New Zealand distribution rights for other leading international brands, including Dragflow, SPP and Hüdig.
During this time we have also significantly expanded our workshop and servicing facilities. In 2012, we moved to our current premises in Lisarow, where we established a fully integrated workshop known as our Reliability Centre.
The FITT Resources Reliability Centre is a fully integrated 2,500m2 rotating equipment workshop, featuring a horizontal and vertical borer, in-house blasting and coating equipment, a 10-tonne lifting capacity and a close loop test rig all under the one roof. We also have full submersible pump overhaul and testing facilities and have introduced full rotating element balancing equipment, enabling FITT Resources to supply servicing for pumps and fans of all sizes, as well as white metal bearings.
In addition to our Reliability Centre, we have also set up a smaller satellite workshop in Artarmon and, in a further expansion of our repair, refurbishment and servicing network, we are set to open a new rotating equipment workshop in Gladstone, which will be located at the heart of the Queensland mining and manufacturing sectors. We are also now able to provide on-site services across the region, including shut down maintenance, equipment assessment, condition monitoring and re-engineering.
Another new and exciting development that we are about to launch is the FITT Resources Turbo Machinery division, which will specialise in high speed compressors and turbines.
The FITT Resources team at work in the Reliability Centre
Among the many other milestones the company has achieved in its first ten years, one of our proudest achievements has been gaining AS/NZS 4801:2001 Occupational Health and Safety accreditation in 2017, demonstrating our commitment to health and safety and the best working practices. This sits proudly alongside our earlier ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems certification, which is an international standard that shows FITT Resources’ commitment to our customers.
During the 10 years in which we have been in operation, FITT Resources has evolved in a number of ways, most notably in the importance of our servicing provision. However, we are not standing still and there is still more change in the offing. Our vision is that we want to be our customers’ number one choice for engineered products and services, delivering quality and reliability and always looking for constant improvement.
To achieve this vision, we will continue to focus on only supplying the best pumps and seals to Australian industry. We are offered a lot of products in this space, but only distribute those brands who correspond with our core values, which are built on the principle that the best quality products are those that ultimately give our customers the lowest life cycle costs.
We are all immensely proud of what FITT Resources has been able to accomplish in its first decade, and the services and support we have been able to provide to a wide cross-section of Australian industry.
However, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve this milestone without the many loyal customers we have worked with over the past ten years, as well as our suppliers with whom we’ve been able to create such strong, ongoing partnerships. Many thanks to all of you, and here’s to the next ten years!
As well as our fully-integrated workshop, we also provide on-site water services industry servicing and repairs