Why does a construction company invest in exhibiting at a food manufacturing trade show? For Total Construction group general manager food and beverage, Rob Blythman, it is about making the most of networking opportunities with suppliers to the industry.
“For us, that’s critical. The more they know us, the more they relay that on to their clients,” Blythman says.
Equipment suppliers are talking to manufacturers regularly about their operational needs but it’s when those conversations turn to a new line, an expansion or a greenfield build, Blythman wants Total Construction to be the name that comes up.
“If they know a builder that understands the hygienic levels required, you don’t have to sit in the room and explain it all, or handhold the builder through the process. Our people can come in, fully understand what needs to be done, work with the equipment suppliers, work with the design team, or be the design team. The client just sits back and says, thank God I can get on with my day job of making product,” he said.
One the first day of the show, half a dozen suppliers had already stopped by the stand. Blythman points out these relationships run in both directions, with the company leaning on its supplier network to sanity-check client plans, right down to details a manufacturer running three shifts might never consider.
“It might be boilers or equipment supply. You want to make sure there’s more capacity in the pipe than the spec says, because they’re running 24/7. There’s uptime and downtime. Those are discussions the client doesn’t even think about,” he said.
Suppliers bring their problems to Total as well, often when a client wants equipment squeezed into a corner of an existing plant.
“They’ll come to us and say, we reckon it’ll work if we just punch out that wall. We can review the proposal for them and look for better solutions. Those discussions work really well, and then the supplier looks good with their client,” Blythman said.
From garage to production facility
The clients Total Construction does meet at foodpro tend to be small and medium manufacturers hitting the inflection point of outgrowing their current and never having run a construction project.
“They’ve built a garage in their backyard or a swimming pool, but they’ve never done a big construction project, and they’re going to the next level.
“It might only be 1000 square metres they need to build or fit out. We can show them how to get from A to Z to a fully functional production facility, and we foresee and remove the hurdles they’re going to come up against, whether it’s council approvals or process design,” Blythman said.
Total Construction has process engineers on staff who have worked in production facilities around the world, and Blythman said their job is to challenge clients early, before decisions get locked into concrete.
He gave the example of small operators planning mezzanine levels in industrial units to maximise floor space, a decision that can double build costs. The company’s engineers will, in Blythman’s words, politely critique.
“I’ve had our engineers talk clients out of projects. And I think that relays to the client that someone is looking out for them. We don’t want to be the builder that puts variations in with the price going up and up. That small to medium guy will be a big guy one day,” he said.
Reading the cycles
Watching who is building, and who has stopped, gives Total Construction an unusual read on the sector. Blythman said demand moves in pronounced cycles, and rarely across the board.
Ready meals, which drove a wave of investment, has run its course for now. “Ready meals is done, probably for the next ten years. The market is flooded,” he said.
Meat processors are pulling back on capital spending after a hard push into export markets left the sector with capacity in hand. Blythman said the industry is disciplined about it.
“You don’t see them grow for growth’s sake. They get led by their market: how many head of cattle are you going to need in the next six months? And they’ll manage that, or they’ll OEM it. They work together even if they’re competitors, which is great. In the meat game, they can do that,” he said.
Beverage is the standout. Blythman said Total Construction has become the go-to builder for a large beverage manufacturer, which is currently in a constant state of reconfiguration.
“They are constantly adjusting, expanding, moving, changing everything in their facilities. They regularly ring us with a different project to price. We’ll give them a high-level number, and they can take it to the board,” he said.
Ice cream is also running hot, with several major manufacturers investing in capacity, and Blythman said the current crop of small, fast-growing operators is coming out of the snacking and protein category.
“Protein balls, those sorts of things. They really are the small operator at the moment. But I’ve always seen the cycles, and it’s definitely sector by sector, not across the board. You can’t be focused on one area. You’ve got to be a bit of a jack of all trades,” he said.
Airports and vertical farms
Among Total Construction’s long-term clients is airline caterer dnata, formerly Alpha Flight Services, for which the builder has delivered facilities around the country for two decades. It is now working on dnata’s catering facility at Western Sydney Airport.
The relationship has also taken Total Construction into vertical farming with Stacked Farm, the Queensland-founded automated grower.
Total is building a Melbourne facility for the company, with more planned around the country.
For Blythman, the appeal to food companies is obvious: controlled-environment growing takes weather out of the supply equation.
“They can control the light, the temperature, the nutrient, the water. They can grow anything, and there’s no spoilage. For a QSR operator, guaranteed supply is critical. They’d rather pay a slight premium and have guaranteed supply at a guaranteed price. Their business model works much more smoothly,” he said.
The robotics revolution that hasn’t arrived
Asked what technology shifts he is seeing come through client facilities, Blythman’s answer was blunt: fewer than the industry expected.
“We all expected robotics and automation to have really taken off by now, but there’s still a cost to get into it. You can’t partially do it. A lot of producers are looking at it and going, one, we can’t afford to automate the whole facility. And two, we’ve got a social conscience to be aware of. You can’t lay off 100 people because you’ve automated,” he said.
That second constraint bites hardest in regional Australia, where a manufacturer is often one of the biggest employers in town.
“The bigger the company, the more impact that has. They don’t want to be seen as the nasty guy, and it flows through to what comes off the shelves. So, it’s a slow burn. We’ve seen plenty of automation in packaging, but robotics doing processing, replacing hands, I think that’s still a way off,” Blythman said.
The company runs an early contractor involvement model, bringing trades in during design so clients see near-live pricing as the project takes shape, which Blythman said keeps builds leaner than the traditional design-then-tender route favoured by the big engineering houses.
“We trust the trades to know what they’re doing. They’re more competitive. A steel fabricator will tell you they can get away with 20 per cent less steel in a building, as long as it’s all signed off. And we’ve got 80 per cent return business. For a builder, that’s a lot,” he said.
In a sector where the cycles turn hard and the next $80 million business is currently working out of a garage, being the builder everyone already knows is Total Construction’s whole strategy.
