MADE IN THE UK
Altrad Belle's DX 1000HT dumper is a capable mover on the jobsite. ALTRAD BELLE In the second of our series celebrating UK manufacturing expertise,
Dan Jenkins learns how the quest for a portable mixer led to the creation of a plant machinery powerhouse.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention - and it is certainly true for Altrad Belle’s origin story. The Belle Group began in the 1950s because founder Doug Blackhurst needed a cement mixer to help build his new house. He couldn’t find a small portable cement mixer anywhere, so he set about designing his own.
Blackhurst soon realised he was onto something, and the famous Belle Mini Mixer was born. The company stayed in the Blackhurst family’s hands until 2009, growing its product range along the way to include generators and skid steer loaders. Along with acquisitions, it created a portfolio of more than 100 types of machinery for compacting, mixing, concreting, cutting, breaking and material handling.
Modernisation When managing director Ray Neilson arrived at the company, though, he quickly realised it had grown too far and was now
overstretched. “22 years ago, I went to my first board meeting and immediately realised we were doing too much,” he says. “We weren’t excelling at anything, and we had too many products to support them all effectively.
“We had to step back, rationalise the product range and build back from there. We fully focused the business on tool and plant hire as our target customer base. That remains our focus today – if a product is not squarely aimed at the hire sector, then we are not going to manufacture it.”
At the same time Belle brought all manufacturing back in-house to improve quality control. “Belle had fantastic test rigs even then. We just had to properly use the knowledge and facilities we already had to ensure we got the product right. We narrowed down the focus of our product lines, got good at what we were doing and over time we have filled out those ranges.”
Neilson also helped introduce lean Japanese manufacturing methodologies. “Implementing all the lean manufacturing techniques was vital, such as layout for one-piece flow, reduced set-up times, creating reliable processes and machines, and reduced batch sizes.”
This efficiency drive involved some difficult conversations with the workforce. “We introduced annualised hours years ago it
MD Ray Neilson holds forth at EHS 2023.
14 Executive Hire News - September 2023
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