Shermac has been designing and manufacturing engineered-for-purpose water carts and support vehicles for the mining, civil and commercial sectors for over 20 years. While the focus has traditionally been on road-going trucks, in response to increasing industry demand, Shermac has expanded its range of off-road vehicles.
The physical size of these off-road vehicles requires a new approach to manufacturing and Shermac has built a specialised facility at its Dalwallinu base to accommodate industry demand.
Off-road water carts and service vehicles have modules that may weigh between 9 and 25 tonnes, and Shermac has constructed a 1,400 square metre heavy fabrication workshop with a 220mm concrete floor that is engineered for 50 tonne point loads.
The workshop will be used for fabrication of large tank modules and installing completed modules on off-road chassis and includes two 25-tonne overhead gantry cranes each with a 12-metre-high lift.
As tanks need to be rotated a number of times during build, a key feature of the new facility is a custom-engineered tank rotation system where equipment, mounted in a floor pit, is connected to the tank which can be lifted and rotated as needed.
Shermac’s Chief Operating Officer Steve Ray said, ‘Shermac has been providing engineered-for-purpose service vehicles to the resource sector for two decades. As vehicle design must reflect the specific operational needs for the unique environment of the customer, and Shermac’s end-to-end capability allows us to relentlessly focus on fitness-for-purpose, lowest lifetime cost of ownership and maximising value for our customers.’
‘Rather than simply upgrading our existing production facilities, we decided to separate manufacturing into road-going and off-road vehicle streams. While the new facility represents a significant investment by Shermac, it demonstrates our commitment to off-road service vehicles and is critical to increased production and ensuring the highest quality product’
Steve added, ‘The new facility will enable Shermac to remove off-road vehicles from our current production line and into a specialised facility. This additional production ‘swim lane’ will free-up and increase capacity for our standard range and significantly reduce build-time for tanks for off-road vehicles.’
‘This also marks important expansion for Shermac. We are an Australian family-owned business who are passionate about supporting regional Australia and we’re delighted that our expansion is creating additional employment opportunities here in Dalwallinu and helping to support our local community.’
