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Trail of construction

16th February 2012
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The past year has been strong for SDC Trailers and with new longer semi-trailers rolling off the production line and a host of innovations in the pipeline 2012 looks like being equally strong. MD Mark Cuskeran gave CM the lowdown on SDC’s plans

Words: Andy Salter ▲ SDC has already As luck would have it, the day the government started production of announced the trials for longer semi-trailers I was in longer semi-trailers says Northern Ireland to check out progress at SDC Trailers.

MD Mark Cuskeran As a result there was much excitement in managing director Mark Cuskeran’s ofice. I’d come to talk about product and business developments at SDC, but with such a game-changer landing at pretty much the same time as my light touched down at Belfast it was inevitable most of the talk would be about the effect of this new piece of legislation.

CM has since written plenty about SDC’s plans for longer trailers and the story has moved on signiicantly in the intervening few months.

The number of trailers on trial and who they have been allocated to has now been conirmed and SDC, along with a number of others, has conirmed that it has already started producing the new length trailers. At the time of CM’s visit, SDC had already manufactured a number of pre-trial vehicles to test concepts and processes. There’s not much going on in this industry that the guys at SDC don’t know about.

It’s getting on for 16 years since I was last at SDC’s factory in Toome. At that time the company was unveiling a new paint shop and fancy piece of machinery for turning over the trailers to ensure a high quality job. Since then it has steadily morphed into the UK’s biggest trailer producer employing around 500 people across the complete group and turning over somewhere in the region of £120m a year.

Improving performance

The holding company is Retlan Manufacturing, and SDC Trailers is joined in the group by steel fabricator MDF and FP&S the trailer parts business that was originally part of Fruehauf at Dereham. “Our 2011 performance is comfortably up on 2010,” says Cuskeran, “and has been improving steadily since 2008, which was one of the worst periods we’ve experienced as a company. At the time our production dropped to 55 trailers per week as the orders dried up. We’re now back up to a build of 95 a week.

“Although the sales dropped sharply in 2008, we continued to invest in our processes to ensure we were as eficient as we could possibly be. In the middle of 2007 we’d had a team of consultants in, specialising in lean manufacturing. The changes we made following that period have driven signiicant savings. We’ve seen a 43% fall per trailer in the carbon footprint of our manufacturing process and our steel wastage at MDF is down by nearly 50%. ‘Lean’ identiies the simple things and gets rid of your limiting factors.”

Graduate programme

As well as the processes, SDC has also invested in people during the past three years with the engineering team doubling in size, says Cuskeran. A graduate engineering programme is in place with a number of universities to nurture talent. The rewards for that investment are now being seen in the shape of a steady stream of product innovation from SDC, all delivering improved operational eficiency to freight transport companies.

The Aeroliner aerodynamic curtainsider is one of the major new developments unveiled by SDC over the past 12 months. The package of innovations offers an 8.8% fuel saving over a conventional curtainsider, claims SDC, and pulls together a host of features, including curved rear end, new smooth design side skirts, front GRP dome delector, rear roof vortex generator, and under loor panelling in conjunction with side skirts to create a smooth airlow beneath the trailer.

Moving floor trailers

The Mansield factory is where the curtainsiders and box vans are completed and there is a large repair facility on site.

SDC has also been focusing on moving loor trailers and recently unveiled a new lightweight, all-aluminium chassis moving loor trailer offering 90.2m3 capacity at an

unladen weight of just 7,860kg, about 500kg lighter than a steel equivalent.

SDC has always had a strong reputation in the construction sector, with tippers a traditional mainstay of the business since the company took over the Neville Charrold tipper operation in Mansield in the 1990s.

The aggregate tipper sector is still well looked after by SDC and a new completely semi-circular tipping trailer has recently joined the line-up. The company reckons this gives improved tipping stability and better material unloading. Further innovations and developments include a lifting deck box van on a step-frame trailer; new swivelling deck trailers and a brand new ratchet deck system with reduced side pillars and simpler ratchet mechanism to give increased side aperture width between the roof pillars.

Satisfying customers

SDC was the irst UK manufacturer to offer the ENXL 12642 XL option on its trailers. This new regulation, although not mandatory, is designed to ensure that the bodywork and curtains meet adequate load containment standards. Since SDC introduced this option in October 2009 (which it has for curtainsiders, box vans, euroliners and lat trailers) it has sold more than 600 trailers to this speciication.

It’s clear from spending time at the SDC facility and in the company of the SDC management team that this company is much more than just a volume producer of trailers. Many years ago Cuskeran and his team recognised that success comes from satisfying customers through innovation and creativity, while ensuring the means of production are as eficient as possible.

“The market is becoming more and more bespoke,” says Cuskeran, “and we have to continually innovate to satisfy that demand and drive the business forward.” ■

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