BHS-Sonthofen establishes joint venture business in Australia

BHS-Sonthofen based in Sonthofen, Germany, has established a joint venture business in Austrialia, BHS-Sonthofen (Aust) Pty. Ltd., offering sales, consulting and on-site service.

For the joint venture, BHS collaborated with Gill Wedmore, owner of the mining services business BFG Group Pty. Ltd., and Wedmore will serve as chairman of the Newcastle/New South Wales-based joint venture. Wedmore has been operating BHS-Sonthofen mixers for many years in his own company.

BHS Australia will be marketing products for the mixing and crushing business sectors in Australia, as well as for the continent’s recycling, scrap and waste material.

BHS-Sonthofen says the venture employs a team of experienced service specialists who have worked with BHS machines for many years, and the facility is equipped with several test machines for customer use and a spare parts warehouse. The venture offers experienced employees with many years of machine expertise to perform installations, maintenance and repair work.

The company says the demand for mixing, crushing, and recycling machines from BHS-Sonthofen in Australia is continuously increasing. BHS mixers in Australia, for example, have been instrumental in backfilling mines for many years. A number of BHS concrete mixers are also being used for major infrastructure projects in Australia, BHS says, such as the current Barangaroo Development Project in Sydney.

In the waste sector, a BHS Rotor RPM Impact Mill in use at a treatment plant in the state of New South Wales crushes used glass, which is used to replace sand as an aggregate for concrete. Sand is in short supply in the Sydney area.
Geoffrey Lee has been working as business development manager for BHS Australia since August, and brings extensive knowledge of machine technology in mining, the construction industry and recycling, BHS-Sonthofen says.

The company’s spare parts warehouse near Newcastle will allow for drastically reduced delivery times, the company says. Moreover, its presence in Australia gives customers and interested parties a strong sense of security before making their investment decisions. They can now use test machines for trials in their own country, the company says.

Dennis Kemmann, managing director of BHS-Sonthofen GmbH, says the new joint venture will greatly benefit Australian customers. “BHS and Gill Wedmore are united by mutual trust which has been repeatedly affirmed over many years. The expertise that our Australian colleagues have developed in using our machines allows us to ensure that the advice and service provided will be at a very high level from day one—precisely what BHS is famous for.”