A Western Australian auto components maker has its sights set on the US market after receiving the first shipment of its wear-resistant braking system from its Thailand-based manufacturing operation.
SafeEffect already has about 300 sets of its ‘sealed’ brakes being used on LandCruisers at Inco’s nickel operations in Canada and the Freeport mine in Indonesia, with plans to increase the company’s offering to other makes of four-wheel drives and the lucrative stop-go vehicle market – especially in the US.
The stop-go market includes things such as buses and rubbish trucks.
The company has also added a sales representative to tackle the Australian mine market.
SafeEffect CEO Vin Morley said there were about eight million stop-go trucks in the US market.
In a previous announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange, SafeEffect said independent estimates valued the US stop-go market at $52 billion and the Australian market at $2 billion.
SafeEffect’s sealed brake technology has the vehicle’s brakes fully surrounded by a cooling liquid.
Mr Morley said the cooling liquid drastically reduced wear on the brakes.
He said the company’s brakes set up, which on a Toyota LandCruiser is priced in the thousands of dollars, would last the lifetime of the vehicle.
“We’ve found no measurable wear on the brakes after 180,000 kilometres [on a Toyota LandCruiser],” Mr Morley said.
For the admittedly high price the customer gets three brakes in one.
The SafeEffect system has the standard braking function, replaces the park brake and also offers an emergency braking system. In the event of brake failure the system applies in a way that brings the vehicle to a gentle stop.
Another benefit of the fully sealed unit is that it does not produce sparks. This means it can be used in hazardous environments such as coal mines.
One stop-go vehicle industry representative WA Business News spoke to said the SafeEffect technology appeared promising.
However, the road to commercialisation has not been smooth.
The company, which listed on the ASX in May 2002 – a bad time to be listing with the full effects of September 11 and SARS blighting the market – has been suspended from trading since October 2003.
Part of the problem came from a $5 million fund raising to pay for its global push.
That fund raising was under-written by Hood Group in Sydney.
The capital raising fell $3.6 million short but Hood failed to come up with the capital. That debt has now been reduced to what the company calls “manageable” proportions.
Mr Morley said the company was aiming to get itself back onto the ASX as soon as possible.
“We want to enter the US market and that will take a lot of capital – a significant number of millions,” he said.
“To go into the US we have to station a company there and partner with the distributors and manufacturers there. We’re somewhat down the way for that to occur.”
Mr Morley said the company was also in discussions with US venture capitalists to try and provide some of that backing.
