Bespoke handling
August 1st 2006

Moving anything from concrete to cheese, solutions from Handling Concepts are designed and built specifically for the individual application. Charlotte Stonestreet met with managing director, Roger Pask, to find out more about the company's problem solving abilities.

Take any cross section of materials handling equipment manufacturers and suppliers and there is little doubt that most of them will claim to provide "bespoke" solutions. Although many companies may well supply specifically to order, there are very few that can claim almost every piece of machinery they supply is a one-off designed exclusively for an individual application – as is the case with Handling Concepts.

Started in 1994 by Roger Pask, a Chartered Engineer whose CV includes British Leyland and Coventry Climax, Handling Concepts is a company that relies on the knowledge, experience, and perhaps most importantly, ingenuity of its staff to provide handling solutions across almost every sphere of industry.

"Essentially we concentrate on providing bespoke solutions to materials handling problems – where people can't get something off the shelf, we will design a solution to the problem. That may be a pretty standard industrial manipulator, but it could equally be an absolutely unique machine," says Pask.

"We have done many jobs for applications where you cannot buy anything even remotely suitable off the shelf, so our solutions providing experience is very diverse. Plus, we work for a diverse range of industries – we can be handling concrete one day, food the next, rolls of paper and film the day after." According to Pask the types of job that Handling Concepts excels in are not about moving items from one place to another, but about re-orientating items.

"Usually our work comes about when someone wants to carry out a process such as picking something up and putting it down again upside down, or loading it into a machine that requires it to be tipped at a particular angle. It's about manipulation rather than transport."

Engineering philosophy Throughout all of Handling Concept's business, Pask's background as an engineer is evident. The individual nature of the solutions provided by the company means it is important for its engineers to gain an indepth knowledge of the application for which they are designing.

"If you are going to do a project well, you have to really get under the skin of it – you've really got to understand it and you can only do that if you have one to one communication with the customer," says Pask.

"When a potential customer approaches me with a particular handling quandary the first thing I do is ask to look at where the item has come from and where it is going to after the point where our equipment would be used. By looking further up stream and further downstream and taking the broader tack you can often see a different way to solve the problem – and it's usually a simpler solution than the customer had in mind in the first place!"

In some cases the company is called in to look at a problem and finds it is able to advise the customer on how to solve the issue using equipment they already have.

"OK, we don't make a sale," says Pask. "But we are very keen to do a good job and reputation is everything – we are not just going to sell somebody a solution for the sake of selling it.

"I'm a pragmatist at heart and sometimes when customers have glorious visions of the sort of solution they want I have to say 'Well, I wouldn't do that, I'd just do something very simple.'

"That is the philosophy we stick to at Handling Concepts – you shouldn't waste other people's money any more than you should waste your own. So we try to be sensible in what we suggest. Sometimes we get asked to do things and you know the customer is only going to carry out the process very infrequently, so why throw loads of money at it?"

Expansion This attitude is one that is reaping rewards for the company. Despite the fact that the UK manufacturing industry it primarily serves is generally declining, the company continues to grow. Having just moved into its third set of premises, recent growth has come about out of a relationship with Dutch company, Hertel, which had a handling division. Following the decision of the former head of Hertel's handling division, George Maddock, to join Handling Concepts as Operations Director, a gentleman's agreement has seen Pask's company take over responsibility for Hertel's equipment and recent warranty commitments.

"This has seen the old Hertel handling division business effectively integrated into Handling Concepts, really strengthening our abilities in areas like roll handling where they'd done quite a lot of work previously," says Pask.

With developments such as this a constant possibility for Handling Concepts, there is little doubt that the company will continue to develop its expertise and problem solving abilities. So next time you have a handling problem that requires a truly bespoke solution, this is the company to call.

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