46 | Total Stockcrates T T Hugh de Lacy Stock crate manufacturer on a roll Total Stockcrate’s aluminium crates are used by transport companies throughout the country. Proud to be associated with Total Stockcrates Congratulations to Robin & the Team TOTAL TRUCK SPRAY PANELBEATING & SPRAYPAINTING Proudly Supporting Total Stockcrates Ph: 06 355 4100 Fax: 06 355 4603 totaltruckspray@gmail.com Job dissatisfaction drove a group of five skilled metal-workers in Feilding to get round the kitchen table and set up with their own company, developing their own designs for the stock crates in which the country’s livestock is transported. Headed by Robin Fellingham, with the financial backing of two business partners whom he bought out more than a decade ago, the group established Total Stockcrates Ltd as a new manufacturer in a competitive market. That was well over 20 years ago, when the five walked into an empty rented warehouse and converted it into a fully-equipped workshop that built crates whose key ingredients were the 26 newly designed aluminium extrusions that are used. Since then the company has put up its own purpose-built workshop, staff numbers have grown to 18 on the workshop floor, plus Robin and an administrative staffer, selling 35-to-40 crates of various configurations a year. Overall the company has sold more than 500 crates. Those 26 extrusions, manufactured in Hamilton by Ullrich Aluminium, remain Total StockCrates’ stock-in-trade. They were designed by the founding group, who had to guide them through the minefield of copyright restrictions to ensure they met the required 15% change threshold to be able to have them manufactured under the company’s name. “We had to make sure our designs were distinctly different from the existing copyrighted ones, but we were motivated to do just that because we were all frustrated and getting no job satisfaction doing things the old way,” Robin says. “Getting the designs sorted was the key to getting the company started, and by comparison the job of securing finance, finding premises, having the extrusion dies made for us and setting up the workshop was comparatively easy,” Robin says. Still it was a tough market, not least because most stock crates were still being made primarily out of steel, and Total Stockcrates got a significant boost when its wares were adopted by the Stephenson Transport company of Waipawa. Bruce Stephenson, the head of the big Hawke’s Bay trucking outfit, ordered a pair of Total Stockcrates’ aluminium crates, then went onto buying them exclusively. At last count his company had acquired more than 50, and there are hundreds of others on other transport companies’ trucks from Bluff to Kaitaia. CONTRACTING “We had to make sure our designs were distinctly different from the existing copyrighted ones, but we were motivated to do just that because we were all frustrated and getting no job satisfaction doing things the old way.” In 2018 the company put up its new 40m x 30m manufacturing workshop in which it can accommodate a full-length truck-and-trailer unit, as well as four bays for building crates. Robin doesn’t spend much time or money on advertising or marketing, just the occasional trip calling on existing and potential clients, but the client list is growing steadily. Robin’s market hasn’t been greatly troubled by the Covid aftermath, but his supply of his vital aluminium components certainly has been. “It got a bit scary trying to get material in for a while there, but it has improved since, and the situation should be better towards the end of the year,” Robin says. “Shipping’s still a problem, and it’s pretty bad for the transport companies when they’re waiting six months past the promised date to get a new truck delivered.” But it’s the impact of government policies on rural communities that worries Robin. “You’ve got a government of greenies and bureaucrats bent on converting farmland into pines, so they take over a big farm which might employ a dozen people, who lose their jobs. “That takes out the small village that provided a community for those people, and along with it goes the local carrier, the school, the vet and the doctor. “That’s what’s happening all over New Zealand at the moment, and it’s ugly,” Robin says.
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