Export prospects shine at AD Coote

Business Asia, March 3, 2000 by Evelyn Duffy

West Australian sheetmetal and lighting company AD Coote & Co is lighting up the sports fields and mine sites of Asia to position itself for healthy export sales.

It has beat tough competition from lighting and column manufacturers in Malaysia and Singapore to supply its products, which will light up soccer pitches in Brunei, the Senakin coal mine in Indonesia and a manufacturing plant in Thailand.

The company has also started to ingratiate itself in Mauritius, where it has supplied solar lighting columns for that country's electricity board.

It is not a bad portfolio for the exporting newcomer, which won its first overseas order in 1997 after winning a tender to supply lighting columns for a Clough Engineering pro-ject in Bangkok.

The kudos from these projects, which earned A$500,000, has led to a flood of inquiries which, according to company projections, will result in orders worth A$1.7 million per annum within three years.

These projections are not based on any carefully executed export-marketing strategy, but rather on reaping the rewards of an interactive Web page and placing catalogues at Austrade offices around the world.

Manager for sales and marketing Peter Craig said inquiries from the Web page, which usually received about 10 hits a day, were increasing all the time.

A policy of promptly responding to all inquiries within a day was producing dividends, with quotes for A$12 million currently outstanding.

"Our inquiries are increasing by about 30 per cent every six months and they come from a wide variety of destinations, including the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, Iraq, North America, Vietnam and Indonesia," Craig said.

"Our Web page provides a lot of details on product specifications and an inquiry form for customers which enables us to respond with prices within a day.

"Sometimes the inquiries are only for a very small amount of product and it wouldn't be worthwhile for us to ship the goods, however we always treat every request with respect and respond immediately."

AD Coote & Co is the largest Australian-owned manufacturer of metal lighting columns.

It is the brain-child of former plumber Arthur Desmond Coote, who started out as a general metal fabricator from the humble beginnings of a house and factory unit in 1968.

Seventy per cent of company income comes from selling metal lighting columns, with the rest from other metal products such as roofing material and guttering.

Craig said the 15 per cent of annual sales sourced overseas was simply "cream" that had arisen from the research and innovation invested in developing a highly competitive product for the local market.

An example of this was AD Coote's involvement in the development of tapered steel columns for use in solar lighting and for remote area communication projects.