Quite a few of the world’s most iconic food and beverage brands have operations in Australia, central to Sydney. At the BSC Prestons branch in Sydney’s Southwest, Fady Elchab regularly works with food and beverage customers to bring their maintenance costs down, save time on production, and keep their operations up and running.
As a Technical Sales Representative, Fady has access to a wide range of suppliers through BSC’s extensive stock holding and the larger network of Motion Australia brands across Australia.
“For all of my key accounts, I try to get out to the sites on a fortnightly basis to ensure equipment is operating up to standard,” he says. “I make sure the site’s stock levels for parts and components are replenished, and the customer is made aware of the most up-to-date products and services available for each of their applications.”
More recently, one of Fady’s largest beverage manufacturing clients was looking to upgrade their conveying system which would require a conversion of hundreds of metres of new chain to be implemented around the plant.
“I went out to the site with a Regal Rexnord engineer to look at the existing system they had in place. The conveyor lines around the site move raw ingredients and bottled beverages around multiple levels and corners morning, noon, and night,” he explains.
As a preferred distributor of Regal Rexnord products in Australia, BSC and Regal Rexnord have shared a decades long working relationship of supplying customers with power transmission products, often performing joint site visits to analyse applications in field and offer engineering and technical support.
The solution the Regal Rexnord engineer and Fady settled on as a recommendation was the Rexnord FlatTop Conveyor Chain because it is the most innovative conveyor chain product on the market, according to Fady.
“When it comes to developing niche power transmission solutions that are geared toward the food and beverage sector, the Rexnord FlatTop Chain belt products are unparalleled in terms of versatility,” he says. “It comes in a range of different thermoplastic materials and surface options that work together as a modular, multi-purpose, conveyor belt solution that is robust in its capability to handle the heavy loads that are present on large scale beverage manufacturing operations.”
“The smart pin retention design works to secure the belt in place on assembly and can be easily removed with a screwdriver for cleaning and sterilising equipment on food and beverage applications that are subject to intermittent washdown cycles,” he furthers. “In addition to this, the open hinge design also gives operators a lot of flexibility for adding and removing parts and components, allowing for complete modularity when building out their line.”
In the end, the customer was interested in Rexnord’s new FlatTop technology and agreed to make the switch over to a completely new system. After taking stock of how much product the site would require fitting up the entire operation with the new conveyor chain – the order was placed.
Fady allocated stock for the hundred metres of chain, taking into consideration spares and replacement parts, and expedited shipping out to the site. At that stage, he provided support during the assembly and initial testing phases until the conversion was completed successfully.
For big beverage brands, Fady says there are two main factors that take priority: balancing the demands for product and the cost of production. “Time spent sourcing parts and components for equipment is always crucial to the success of a beverage business.”
“At BSC, we want our customers to rely on us to always step up when there’s an issue and back up our support services with readily available stock,” he concludes. “And because we have a streamlined supply chain system in place, we have the ability to eliminate the risk of long lead times and head up any delays.”
