MASPRO’s commitment to quality, productivity and safety has made it a recognised name in mines all over the world.
From its humble beginnings in Condobolin, New South Wales, to leading the engineering and spare parts supply at some of the biggest mines around the globe, the name MASPRO has become synonymous with quality.
This focus on quality has seen MASPRO go from strength to strength since it opened its doors in 2006, focusing on a culture of innovation and growth.
“We try and foster a culture of quality throughout our entire business, no matter what the role is,” MASPRO chief executive officer and founder Greg Kennard said.
“We need to be constantly asking ourselves if we’re putting in our best efforts.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re cleaning the windows, speaking to a customer, or machining a precision part.”
Kennard said this push for quality is firmly rooted in MASPRO’s DNA.
“If we step back a little to where we started as a smaller team, this focus on quality was the foundation on which we grew,” he said.
MASPRO takes pride in every product and solution it sends out the door, with each meeting a number of rigorous quality checks.
Image: MASPRO
“We have processes in place to ensure that every step of the manufacturing process is meeting specifications,” Kennard said. “All this information is recorded and held in our system to ensure full traceability.”
When MASPRO performs work, part of the company’s due diligence includes regularly reviewing its quality systems to ensure compliance to its own quality standards
This commitment to transparency, coupled with its commitment to delivering quality, has seen MASPRO become a leading mining technology business.
“Being able to provide a high-quality product that’s trusted, reliable and fit for hard rock mining is important to us,” Kennard said.
Mining is an industry in which just a single mistake can be extremely costly in terms of safety and profitability, meaning MASPRO is more determined than ever to keep its customers safe and productive.
“Miners need to trust the equipment and the replacement parts they’re using,” Kennard said. “They can’t afford the downtime that occurs when a machine is out of action.
“If we see that a machine is being pushed to its limit, we go away and redesign the products that are failing so we can give that machine new limits.
“We do that with our three strategic pillars in mind: safety, reliability and productivity.”
Safety is a particularly important aspect of MASPRO’s business, as the company wants to make sure every miner goes home at the end of their shift.
“If we can come up with a better design or way of doing something that will keep people off the more hazardous equipment, that’s important,” Kennard said.
And this focus on safety doesn’t stop at the mine. All of MASPRO’s design, fabrication and manufacturing is done in Australia with an in-house engineering team focused on working at the highest standards.
Image: MASPRO
MASPRO is also investing in automation, which can significantly improve safety on a mine site. The company will often incorporate automation into its manufacturing processes to support loading, lifting and carrying to reduce harm and repetitive stress injuries in the production team.
Coupling safety with technology seems to be a recipe for success. According to Kennard, the ability to improve a product beyond its benchmark in a safe and efficient way is at the core of MASPRO’s business.
“There may be an industry expectation for a product or assembly to last a specific service life,” he said.
“We recognise that reaching this service life carries the risk of failure, which could potentially cause injury.
“Therefore, we focus on enhancing the quality of the product through design and other improvements, aiming to develop a solution better suited to its application.”
Kennard pointed to a situation where MASPRO’s insistence on quality and reliability was able to save the day at a major iron ore mine in Western Australia.
“The mine had some gearboxes that were only getting a runtime of 500 to 1000 hours before failing,” he said. “We were able to bring the boxes back to our research and design centre, where we did some testing.”
Image: MASPRO
Because MASPRO is a smaller operation that many large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), it was able to complete the work quickly for the major miner. This agility meant the company was able to make some key changes and send the gearboxes back so the mine could minimise lost production time.
“We made some changes to the boxes and sent them back,” Kennard said. “Now, they’re consistently hitting 6000 hours and above.
“The miner was churning through around five units each month before we fixed the problem. But since we’ve been working with their team and they have implemented our improved solution, they’ve only replaced the head twice in two months – saving over $20,000 each time.”
The ability MASPRO has to solve problems quickly comes from working with its customers as genuine partners.
“We work with a mine’s reliability engineers to understand their problems, then get on site and come up with solutions,” Kennard said.
“And once we come up with a solution that is fit for purpose, we can commercialise it throughout Australia and offshore, knowing that it’s a better product.
“We know that gives our customers more reliability, safety and productivity by using that particular assembly of the solution.”
MASPRO works closely with its casting and forging suppliers to make sure the company is supported in all areas of its business.
It also works closely with its heat treatment plants to ensure they follow the company’s specific process for heat treatment – all for the sake of quality.
“Understanding the whole situation from various stakeholders is important for building out a solution,” Kennard said.
“Once we partner with someone to come up with a new design, we can push it out to anyone else that’s in that same industry.
“Delivering quality consistently is what sets us apart from the competition.”
Kennard credits MASPRO’s willingness to adopt new technology as a reason for its continued success.
“There’s always a better way to do something,” he said.
“We’re not the company that thinks that just because we’ve done it a certain way for years that that’s the only way to do it. We’re always looking at ways to produce something better.”
This feature appeared in the October–November 2024 issue of PNG Mining.
