Business

After three years of drought, including two years of pandemic-induced economic disruption, Namoi Cotton, Australia’s largest cotton processor, is back to ginning up new business, making a compelling case for cloud migration.  The company has adopted Oracle’s OCI technology to help ramp up production and meet growing demand.  Following drought and pandemic-induced economic disruption, cotton growers have ramped up production, pushing to near capacity Namoi Cotton’s 10 ginning facilities and three warehouses across New South Wales and Queensland. Namoi Cotton is aiming to gin 1.1 million to 1.2 million bales in 2022, 40% above its sustainable average volume. Prices for lint cotton—the raw fibre from the cotton plant after the ginning process removes the seeds and other unwanted material—are at their highest levels in years due to pent-up demand and the continued supply chain challenges stemming from the global pandemic. Namoi Cotton’s business, including its marketing and logistics joint ventures, is on the upswing, with the company reporting positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) last year. “We are in a good position at the moment…you don’t often see high prices and high volumes at the same time,” said Neil Johns, Namoi Cotton’s executive general manager of strategy and business development, on the company’s earnings call in late April. ‘Technical debt’ With Namoi Cotton’s business on the rise, so are the demands on its IT systems. Throughout the drought and into the pandemic, however, Namoi Cotton accumulated “technical debt”—systems it hadn’t upgraded in years because finances were tight.  Exhibit A was the company’s core applications for managing accounts receivable, accounts payable, and spare-parts inventory. Those on-premises applications, part of the Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1 suite, were past their end of life and thus were expensive to maintain and no longer eligible for security patches, bug fixes, and […]

A specialist supplier of steel tube and pipe, Austube Mills, part of the InfraBuild Group, is benefitting from a low-maintenance, time-saving, and safe hydraulic clamping solution for its steel slitters at its Acacia Ridge plant in Queensland. Austube Mills Acacia Ridge, which has been manufacturing and producing steel solutions since 1984, installed Technofast EziTite clamp nuts, which provide reliable and precisely repeatable force, on its steel slitters to allow the rotating slitter blades to cut through kilometres of black steel. Once the steel is cut to width, it is shaped into rectangular, square or round tubes on tube rolling mills, which are subsequently used in a huge range of applications in industries such as construction, manufacturing, mining, transport, and agriculture. “The Technofast solution is not just more reliable – it’s safer, too,” says Austube Mills Manufacturing Superintendent, Michael Thomasson, who has been working with the company for more than 30 years, starting as a fitter, and holding roles such as maintenance planner, maintenance superintendent and manufacturing superintendent. He has a Mechanical Engineering Diploma and Graduate Diploma in Maintenance Management. “I remember the old days when workers would use a C spanner and whack the nut with as much force as possible, which came with a much higher risk of hand injuries. Plus, it wasn’t easy to get the same clamp load each time when using manual force,” says Mr Thomasson. EziTite Hydraulic Nuts and Bolts are rapidly applied by being installed on bolt studs then hydraulically actuated, stretching the bolt to the precise tension required and then locking it in place mechanically with a locking device. The reverse procedure permits equally rapid disassembly when it is eventually required for maintenance. The globally available technology – which is proven in more than 30 years’ service in slitter applications – also curbs […]