South Australian specialised copper tubing and cable company Key Tubing & Electrical—KTE for short—is seeing global orders rising as new Australian markets also open up says local news site InDaily.
KTE makes niche wiring components for a range of industries including caravan, food and beverage, air conditioning, electrical, healthcare and mining.
But Covid19 saw a huge demand from hospitals around the world for the company’s heater cable for respirators used to treat patients with the virus. Production jumped from 2.5M metres of the encased copper cable per month pre-pandemic to roughly 6M now.
KTE started making copper tubing for the refrigeration industry 70 years ago, but its current owners, Gary Hugo and Ken Tregloan, bought the company in the 1990’s after seeing an opportunity for a niche manufacturer to produce products that can’t be done on a huge scale.
The jump in production and sales has also come about as Australian companies look to home grown solutions in the face of a disrupted supply chain globally from Covid19. Its meant KTE is able to invest in developing more hi-tech products.
“We’re doing products at the moment that are pretty simple but we want to move into smarter component products such as sensors, electronics and highly specialised cables,” said KTE Commercial Director Henri Hugo—Gary Hugo’s son who bought into the business in 2012.
“We’ve got robotics engineers working for us now and that’s the sort of area we’re getting into, we’re not just wiring, we want to design and develop lots of different types of things.”
KTE also offers custom engineering and manufacturing services, able to build its own machines to make bespoke components on a relatively small scale.
InDaily report: https://indaily.com.au