With a humble but proud history making ball bearing turntables dating back to 1952 in Neu-Isenburg Germany, Jost is a company spreading its wings.
It has become one of the top ancillary equipment suppliers to the transport and agricultural sectors globally.
Formed two decades later, Jost Australia has the lion share of the market, buoyed by a tradition of success based on flexibility, technical know-how, entrepreneurial action and close relationships.
National Product Manager for Agriculture Michael Garley, who has been with the company since 2001, says one of Jost Australia’s main strengths lies in its proactivity and the ability to identify future markets.
“Jost Australia still supplies ball bearing turntables, once the cornerstone of the company, but also offers ancillary components such as agricultural and transport couplings and hitches, fifth wheels and kingpins, landing and jockey legs, hydraulic products and cylinders and some key wheel products which are taking the transport world by storm,” he says.
“We have acquired businesses over time which not only supplement our core strategies but also expose new, evolving markets requiring development.”
Garley has seen plenty of changes since he began at Jost. Having recently returned from Agritechnica in Germany, he observes environmental sustainability has been added to functionality, reliability and increasing efficiency as key to the market’s focus.
“It’s really interesting to note the symbiotic relationship the industry has with developing better technologies and reducing environmental impacts,” he says.
“The two go hand-in-hand, and really are a by-product of each other. It really gives the industry another path towards financial and ecological success.”
A new approach to safety is the other noticeable change Garley has witnessed.
Naturally, Garley says the quality of Jost products is the best available anywhere in the world, but he adds this is only bettered by the level of service the company offers.
“Internally, we have a saying about giving new employees ‘the Jost injection’,” he says, “which is about identifying our core values and training these guys up on our strong service ethic.
“I know our customers can readily identify with the way we do business as well.”
“Our business has always been built on relationships. Some of the relationships we had in the early days of Jost Australia are still going strong today. Sure, we have fewer hairs and some extra kilos than when we started, but the drive to provide a trustworthy and reliable service is as strong today as it ever was.”
With the Australian arm of Jost continually growing, the time was right to set up a permanent branch in South Australia.
Located in Wingfield, Adelaide, the new office will offer customers the opportunity to save on freight costs by sourcing their Jost requirements locally rather than waiting overnight for products from the eastern states.
Read the full profile in the March issue of NewFarmMachinery Magazine, out March 24. Click here to subsribe to the magazine.