Quality, no-nonsense products manufactured in Australia is continuing to keep John Berends Implements ticking along
After nearly 60 years in business, John Berends Implements knows a thing or two about what Australian farmers need.
The company knows farmers are after solid, reliable equipment which represents value for money and will handle the nation’s demanding conditions with ease.
As a shining example of Australian manufacturing, all implements from John Berends are produced at the company’s factory in Melbourne and represent exactly what local farmers are seeking.
With such longevity in the business, the company knows the wheel does not need to be reinvented when its products have stood the test of time since John Berends’ founding in 1966.
“It’s probably a little bit different to cars and tractors and things like that where you’ve got to keep making changes because of technology,” general manager Derrick Berends says.
“For us, the product is very simple. It does a job and that’s all people really want.
“You might have some small changes, but as long as you can keep making and selling that product, there’s not always necessarily a need to redesign it.”
While there may not always be a glitzy new product for John Berends to showcase, this is testament to the ongoing endurance and quality which its workhorse implements have.
Its product range is varied, with everything having been carefully devised over decades in business to ensure there are no weak links in the offering.
Even a snapshot at its slasher range – a ‘bread and butter’ product – reveals everything from light duty slashers designed for compact tractors through to extra heavy duty units designed for 130hp tractors.
A special contractor range suits those who will work the slasher continuously, while its twin rotor slashers are available in trailing and linkage models.
This variety shows John Berends does not expect customers to accept a ‘one size fits all’ product, although everything it offers has been based around customer demand.
“Most of those items that we build are things that we know we can sell reasonable quantities of to make it efficient,” Derrick says.
“Slashers have always traditionally been our biggest market, but they’re also the product we have the most competition in because there’s probably more of them sold in Australia compared to other implements.
“We’re very strong in grader blades and rakes – both stick rakes and landscape rakes – and we’ve managed to keep the cost of those down quite considerably and are very competitive against some of the cheap imported equipment.”
John Berends does not want to get into a price war with the cheapest of imported implements, but in addition to highlighting that the company’s products are “very competitive” on price against those, Derrick says there are several reasons why implements from John Berends excel.
The first of these is the company’s longevity and ability to supply spare parts for equipment of all ages, plus the trust which customers can have in the ongoing aftermarket support from an Australian company.
“A lot of people come in and they’ve got machines that are 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years old and they’re surprised they could still get parts for it because we still make them here,” Derrick says.
“That probably sets us apart from a lot of other companies because there’s not too many others that have been here for the long term.
“We get customers who didn’t buy their machine from us, but they bought it only five years ago and they can no longer get parts for it and they come to us hoping we can help.
“It’s a factor that really annoys people because they bought a machine and it might have been price based or whatever was in stock, then five years later they’ve got to do all the hard work trying to fix it or replace parts for it.”
In a time when many companies have moved away from Australian manufacturing due to either staff shortages or finding the overall cost too prohibitive, John Berends has found the middle ground.
Derrick – whose father John founded the business – has been involved since 1997 and has overseen an expansion of the factory and warehouse space plus continued investment in manufacturing through the addition of welding robots and a high-speed plasma cutter.
Priding itself on being a value for money option, these investments have enabled John Berends to refine what it does and maintain production efficiency to ultimately benefit the end user.
“We focus on building something strong to suit the conditions, but we don’t go overboard with making it look pretty, which keeps the cost down,” Derrick says.
“We’re very efficient at what we do because we build everything in bulk and you can keep your cost down doing that.
“Our objective and aim is to provide value for money for the end user – the farmer – and keeping the products strong.
“We build it to the specs we would like to have if we were buying it, so we want it to do certain things and be strong and not built to a price, whereas a lot of the cheaper imports that come in are built to a price,” Derrick says.
“We’ll build it to that strength but keep it simple enough that we’re not adding too much unnecessary cost to it.”
Buying an implement based purely on price is often a case of getting what you pay for, Derrick says, while adding that many of these imported products are not tailored to local conditions.
Even for farmers with small acreage, he believes it is still important to buy a product which can not only handle its intended work but also the bigger jobs which regularly come up.
“If you want to buy $1,000 slasher, you’ll get a slasher that’s only worth that much, whereas we want to make a slasher for the applications which Australian farmers are doing,” Derrick says says.
“A lot of what comes in is just built to their own local market specifications and if you’re an importer, you just basically buy what they have, you don’t redesign it for Australian conditions and that’s where they come unstuck.
“Farmers often say they’ve only got a small amount of work to do, or light work, but in reality that doesn’t happen. There’s always going to be an application where you test it a bit more.
“Sometimes we get customers who say ‘I’ve only got 10 acres. I can’t justify that’, but if your machine breaks down in those 10 acres, then you’re worse off.
“You still need the quality to match the conditions that are around.”
John Berends Implements’ warehouse and factory is located in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong and its products are sold through an extensive national dealer network.
The company will also be at the upcoming Wimmera, Farm World and Seymour field days in Victoria, while its full product range can be viewed online at www.johnberendsimplements.com.au