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Doubling up
Page 55
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Doubling your customer base takes some doing, hut Raven's merger with the Ray Smith Group (RSG) last November has come near to doing just that.
It seems a timely marriage, especially with the drawbar business suffering from a shortage of new right-hand-drive chassis due to an abnormally high demand for trucks in Eastern Europe and beyond.
"By contrast, the container industry is extremely lively," says RSG managing director David Browning. "And with both Felixstowe and Harwich seeking to increase port traffic by 50%, it looks set to grow even more," The merger has resulted in a bogies division being established at RSG's Fengate, Peterborough factory with a production line set aside for Raven's innovative containercarrying designs.These include the standard Lock & Go sliding skeletal, three-piece triaxle Combi-Slider and the TS version with central extending frame:Ibis allows the tag section to be unhitched for handling 29-tonne containers; alternatively it can be part of a single-axle trailer when two standard 20-footers are carried.
Most of the mechanical fittings and roller bearings are now made in-house so there are no supply problems. "We're currently building six skeletals a week of all types," says Browning's fellow director Paul Raven. "We have orders that will take us through to the summer months."
The firm is selling Combis into Norway, the Netherlands and Germany and is handling enquiries from as far away as Australia, Israel and South Africa.
RSG has not built semi-trailers before, but its engineering expertise and manufacturing capacity coupled with Raven's unique designs make this the ideal partnership.