FAN Manufacturer Recognised For Business Excellence

AMS, one of South Africa's leading fan suppliers and Fantech, Australia are both foreign subsidiaries holey owned by the TLTA Group of the UK.

Fantech was started in 1973 by Jack Pirie and Glen Harries as a fan manufacturing business and was later bought by the ELTA group. The EGAP (Elta Groups Asia Pacific) now employs approximately 280 people with a network of company owned facilities comprising of:

• The Fantech manufacturer factory of 10,000m2 in Melbourne, Fantech warehouse/office facilities in Sydney, Adelaide and Darwin.
• Air Design - a distributor of Fantech products and manufacturer of air handling units.
• Systemaire - a distributor of Fantech fans and filter products
• Ideal Rayson - Fantech branch in Canberra.
• Sales office in New Zealand located in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
• Independently owned Australian Agents located in Townsville and Newcastle.

The success and outstanding achievements of Fantech was recently recognised by the Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce (GDCC): an organisation that covers a large portion of the South East of Melbourne.

The premier Regional Business Awards, now in the 19th year, are a function of the GDCC, designed to profile and highlight successful business in the Region. Nominees for the awards are drawn in various categories and Fantech was nominated in three award categories as well as the overall Premier Regional Business Award. The awards were presented as a Gala Dinner held in mid-March 2010, which was very successful for Fantech, having won the Employment category and the overall award.

To provide some understanding as to the scale of this event, statistics have shown that some 43% of the state of Victoria's manufacturing GDP comes out of this region and nationally it contributes approximately 15% to Australia's production output.

The Premier Regional Business Award and Employment Category Award is a significant achievement in the history of Fantech and is a strong acknowledgement of the success and stature of the company.

The 2010 presentation showcased 15 companies who were nominated for 7 categories and there were four finalists for the Premier Award.

At the presentation, Chris Ogilvy, Managing Director of Fantech, paid tribute to the commitment of the Fantech management and staff; "We are now quite a complex organisation with a spread of locations and product-market specialisations. The on-going success of our business is driven by its commitment to customer service, product development, technical expertise and continuous improvement. Our staff havebeen working across the group to:

• Implement best practices
• Create innovative systems and processes to improve efficiency and quality control- Increase manufacturing and stock flexibility
• As well as ensuring our staff are working in safer, high standard environments.

I thank all the staff for their hard work and on-going commitment to provide our customers with the best service and the highest quality products."