BLUE Scotland has recently made a “game-changing” move to much larger premises in Stirling.
The company has taken over a three-and-a-half acre site at Broadleys Business Park in a change designed to offer customers an enhanced overall service.
The new building includes a training room, workshop and refurbishment bays.
Allan Kane, General Manager of Blue Machinery (Scotland) Ltd, told Project Plant that the move sends a clear message to the marketplace and reaffirms the company’s commitment to the local area.
“Where we were before was a good bit smaller,” Allan said. “The key differentiator for us is after-sales and the new facility enables us to better serve our customers due to our far superior stockholding in Scotland – over £500,000 worth of parts will be available to collect or same-day delivery.
“We’ve now got a facility where we can store the majority of our machines inside with a dedicated, fully equipped workshop that will enable us to offer full machine refurbishments and preventative maintenance type work that we weren’t in a position to provide in the past, certainly in our own facilities. We are focusing 100% of our efforts on offering a better service to customers. That’s the bottom line.”
One acre of the new premises is undercover, consisting of offices, a workshop, spares and stock.
“It gives us far more elbow room,” Allan added. “Staff numbers have increased significantly in the last five years and we’ve doubled the size of our service team in the last year. We’re growing rapidly.
“Another benefit of the new site is that it’s only half a mile from the old one so there’s been minimal disruption to the staff in terms of travelling and it has also given us a seamless continuity of service while the move was taking place.
“The search for suitable premises started almost four years ago with Cumbernauld, Grangemouth and Falkirk being considered as options. As with any relocation we had to consider the impact on staff but with this new site it was just one more tick in the box.
“Staff morale has gone through the roof and having been shoehorned in to our last office, everybody is now extremely proud of where they come to work every day and for the few that have visited so far, our customers have been absolutely blown away. This shows the industry that we’re here for the long haul and sends a message to the marketplace that businesses, such as ourselves, are re-investing.
“Stirling has been the home of Blue Scotland for nearly 20 years and we intend to be here for the next 20. For us to see steady growth we think we need to be improving our service year on year which this facility will help us achieve.”
With larger premises, Blue Scotland is now in a position to add even more value to its overall offering by providing operator training within the purpose-built training room. “On a monthly basis we’ll select a machine and contact our customers who currently operate such a model and then offer half-day seminars from the OEM factory experts,” Allan explained. “Customers and their operatives can join us in a classroom environment and also make use of stock machines to enable hands-on training to put in practice everything that they have learned.
“That’s such an important factor for us. We believe it’s something else that we can offer that sets us apart.
“The new facility was pretty much plug and play and was a more cost effective and time-saving solution than a purpose-built alternative.
“We spent six weeks re-modelling the offices to make them more modern and concentrated heavily on parts storage, installing extensive racking throughout this area to enable over £500,000 of stockholding.
“We got the keys in late December 2015 and started using the facilities in the early part of this year primarily for the space it offers for the secure storage of machines.
“The staff moved in at the end of May and since then we have recruited a receptionist and will be adding to the service admin team with a workshop manager following shortly to look after machine refurbishments.
“The central location is also important. We’re 40 minutes from Glasgow and 45 minutes from either Edinburgh or Perth.
“As far as refurbishment and preventative maintenance is concerned our vision is for customers to be able to drop their machines in to us while transporting them across the Scottish motorway network that links us.
“We’re going to have an open day later in the year to properly showcase the premises and all of the onsite facilities.
“Hopefully this will demonstrate first hand everything that Austin Carey and his team at Blue Scotland are trying to achieve.
“We appreciate that for our customers service is key and in the crushing, screening and recycling game especially, downtime is a no go.
“If we’re equipped to have fast moving parts on the shelf and have the service team to back it up as well as offer operator training then it all adds to the overall positive picture. Going forward, the more we can back up our products, the better placed we are to serve the demands of our customers which remains our number one priority.”
