News & Media

Jeff Fuller, President of Fuller Industrial has been reelected to the board of directors of SAMSSA.

Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA) brings together a number of highly experienced private sector mining supply and service companies that are prepared to assist clients in domestic and international markets.

SAMSSA represent the interests of largest concentration of expertise in mining supply/products and services from within the most recognized center of excellence worldwide.

For More information about SAMSSA, please visit their web site at www.samssa.com
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Fuller Industrial, a Sudbury manufacturer of process piping and elastomeric lining systems, has scooped up a $500,000 contract for the supply of rubber-lined pipe and fittings for an overseas concentrator and is poised to win another $8 million contract for a second concentrator, announced company president Jeff Fuller.

Equipped with an 11-foot wide by 55-foot long autoclave for curing rubber, Fuller Industrial has experienced spectacular growth since opening its doors in 2004. Sales have doubled every year and the company is successfully competing against South African, Australian, European and North American competitors for international contracts.

The company has 30 employees and plans to hire another 15 to cope with increased business.

Price is a factor in winning international contracts, but engineering firms overseeing multi-million dollar capital projects are equally concerned about a vendor’s capabilities and track record, said Fuller.

“They want to have a comfort level. They want to feel confident that they’re going to get what they need. The specifications are very strict and there aren’t a lot of companies that can do this kind of work.”

Fuller has also announced the opening of a new division, Fuller Valve, to manufacture flexible piping connectors, expansion joints, duct connectors, duckbill check valves, pinch valve replacement sleeves and purpose built pinch valves.

Under the direction of Ian Watson, a 30-year industry veteran, the division will diversify the company’s customer base and expose it even more to the export market.
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Fuller Industrial in Sudbury, a rubber based lining and pipe fitting Fabrication Company, has increased the company’s capacity threefold with the purchase of a new 23,000 square foot building in Walden.

Jeff Fuller, President of Fuller Industrial and Treasurer of SAMSSA, said the new building will be ready to house over 50 employees by mid September 2007 and the new technology and increased employment opportunities will be “good news” for the Greater City of Sudbury.

Mr. Fuller said: “We will need 15 more people in the next months covering a wide range of skills including pressure welding and rubber lining apprentices.”

Fuller Industrial started three years ago with three employees with a vision of becoming the premiere centre for rubber lining and fitting fabrication both domestically and globally.

Jeff said; “We wanted to grow exponentially, while maintaining and improving the quality of our product as we expanded. Our success is tied directly to the skills of the people that work for us from our engineering department through to the technicians on the shop floor. We have always insisted that staying ahead of the curve comes from having the right people doing the best work possible and making sure our customer is more than satisfied. The formula has attracted some of the best local talent and we are looking for more as we grow”.

Evidence of Fuller Industrial’s constant innovation and forward thinking is the implementation of integrated production software including scanners, bar coded job travelers and real time data collection The new shop will also feature automated pressure welding processes and cutting edge procedures including a green approach to energy consumption and efficiency.

Fuller Industrial has gained an international reputation for excellence having completed several mill expansion projects throughout North America.

Fuller Industrial is on its way in becoming a world class centre for rubber lining and pipe fitting and Jeff is proud of its growth and employees.

For more information, contact Jeff Fuller at jfuller@fullerindustrial.com or visit www.fullerindustrial.com

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Sudbury-based Fuller Industrial has plans for no less than world domination of the rubber-lining business.

The company lines industrial pipes with rubber, which makes them resistant to abrasion and chemical corrosion. It also does engineering, pipe and fitting fabrication, painting, quality control, export packaging, logistics and shipping.

“The rubber liners of the world tend to be very small, regional and almost mom-and-pop. They serve the local markets and they’re just thinking inwardly,” said company president Jeff Fuller. “That gives us an advantage because we’re able to get jobs right on their doorstep.”

Fuller recently closed a contract to supply pipe for a mill at a mine in the Americas, and was working out the details at press time with Sherritt International for another contract in Africa.

Both projects are worth millions of dollars, he said.

“As far as I can tell, this rubber lining job in Africa is the biggest job in the world right now.”

Fuller will also be adding another 15 people to his current crew of 30 by the first quarter of 2008 to satisfy the requirements of the two large contracts and other orders.

The company has purchased a 23,000-square foot facility in Sudbury’s Walden Industrial Park to handle the increased volume of business. It currently occupies a 12,000-square foot building.

“The new facility is going to quadruple our capacity,” said Fuller. “Two-thirds of that capacity is already spoken for with orders.”

The company attributes about 20 per cent of its work to foreign sales, but Fuller expects that to increase to 60 per cent next year.

Rubber-lining jobs are plentiful because of high metal prices, but Fuller said his company wouldn’t be getting so many orders if it didn’t have an efficient manufacturing process.

A new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system was recently acquired to track the company’s manufacturing process.

“Every job that we send down to the shop has a bar code on it and every single step that you have to do is bar coded,” he said.

“The worker grabs the job and there’s a picture with all of the specifications, and he scans every step. It provides 100 per cent traceability and 100 per cent transparency, which is really important for our customers.

“At any given point we know the status of the order. It’s not ‘Let me get back to you.’ You can actually get a password and go online and check your order’s status.”

Fuller Industrial has also recently purchased a new high-end welding machine. The welding jobs done by this machine are checked by x-rays to ensure the work is technically perfect.

“It used to be that nobody cared about that stuff as long as the weld looked good and had a nice paint job. But now the world is a different place.”

The company’s largest autoclave, used to harden the rubber inside the pipes, has an 11-foot diameter inside and is 55 feet long so that even the largest pipes can be treated.

Fuller said his employees are currently developing different rubber compounds to improve the product, as well as innovative techniques to do the rubber lining.

“There are some savings that can be had in developing rubber compounds that weren’t economically feasible until our volumes had increased to this point,” he said.

“The rubber will be better, the finished product will be better and the process will be faster. It will also make us more competitive.”
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Sudbury company gears up to handle $10 million job in Madagascar

Fuller Industrial, a Sudbury-based company specializing in pipe fabrication and rubber lining, has acquired a fully automated Rotoweld CNC welding machine for prefabrication of industrial pipe.

Featuring machine vision, adaptive controls and robotics technology, the Rotoweld 2500 produces X-ray quality welds with minimal human intervention. The first and currently the only welding machine of its kind in Ontario, the Rotoweld 2500 will assist Fuller Industrial with a $10 million fabrication and rubber lining job for Sherritt International’s new nickel concentrator and hydromet plant at its Ambatovy nickel project currently under development halfway around the world in Madagascar.

“You program the type of weld you want and a camera watches it and adjusts the amperage, the wire speed, the rotation of the fitting, the depth, and the side to side, so it gives you a perfect weld every time,” said company president Jeff Fuller.

The Rotoweld 2500 is faster and more accurate and gets around the problem of recruiting welders because “there aren’t a lot of them around,” according to Fuller. “We’re not replacing jobs. We’re doing work that we wouldn’t have been able to do because we couldn’t hire enough welders to do it.”

The machine operator sits at a control station and watches a camera view of the weld in progress.

Twin workbays maximize arc-on time by allowing re-loading of one chuck without interrupting the welding on the other.

“With this machine we can handle any piping job in the world,” said Fuller.

The company has been in business since 2004, but Fuller and his father, Bill, have a wealth of experience in pipe fabrication and rubber lining, having operated Abrafex Ltd. until Bill’s retirement in 2002.

Jeff worked in retail banking for awhile and spent some time on the road with a rock ‘n roll band before deciding to pick up where his father left off.

“When we opened for business four years ago, we immediately took an international focus,” he said. “We knew that if we did that, we would need quality systems and the best equipment and facilities.”
According to Fuller, there are a lot of small players with a regional focus in the rubber lining business.

“In Sudbury, there are five companies that can do rubber lining. In the rest of Canada, there are another five, but most of them are focusing on local markets. It’s a sideline for them. They do conveyor belts or something else and do rubber lining on the side. Our focus is strictly on rubber lining.”

The Rotoweld 2500 is just one example of Fuller’s determination to build a world-class rubber lining business.

Cutting-edge enterprise resource planning software acquired by Fuller Industrial has streamlined its business and production processes.

“Every step of every job is bar-coded, so we have real-time capture of where we are with every job,” said Fuller. “Customers can also use the system to track their jobs. It used to be that they’d call and you’d tell them what they wanted to hear, but now it’s transparent.”

Spool Drawings

Fuller has gone one step further and fully automated the production of spool drawings, detailed drawings showing the dimensions and fabricating instructions for every section of pipe.

“It’s OK to have an engineer make them if there are only five or six, but if you have 20,000 pieces, you’d need a whole team of engineers. Instead, we use a software solution that takes the plant design model and creates all of the spool drawings for us.”

Another big advantage is that because the drawings are based on the model with no opportunity for human error, customers no longer have to review and approve them.

Fuller’s next step is to create a library of pipes and fittings that engineers can use within their plant design software packages.

“With a library of pipes and fittings, they wouldn’t have to ask us what we can rubber line and what we can’t. If a man can’t reach his hand in a fitting, you can’t rubber line it, but the people doing the model don’t always know that.” On top of all this, the company recently moved into a new 23,000-square foot building in Sudbury, opened a branch in Edmonton, Alberta, and purchased a state-of-the-art, 1,500-square foot paint spray booth.

A massive 55-foot autoclave with an interior 11-foot diameter was acquired earlier this year for curing rubber-lined pipes.
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LEDUC, Alberta, August 18, 2008 – Companies in Western Canada’s booming resource sector are now able to consolidate their pipe fabrication, rubber lining and powder coating work under one roof.

A new company, Fuller Western Rubber Linings Limited, opened for business in July in the Nisku Industrial Park to serve the MINING AND OIL & GAS INDUSTRIES in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Colombia.

Operating out of a 37,000-square foot building on a 7.5-acre lot, Fuller Western will employ state-of-the-art equipment and computer systems for the prefabrication of tanks, vessels and pipelines requiring corrosion and abrasion resistance.

“We are very excited to be offering this important service from our base in the Edmonton area,” said Fuller Western President and Managing Partner Jeff Stern. “The timing couldn’t be better with all of the activity we’re seeing in the uranium, potash, base metals and oil and gas sectors across Western Canada.”

The company is jointly owned by Stern, Wayne Duncan of Nisku-based CSI Coating Systems Inc. and Jeff Fuller of Sudbury, Ontario-based Fuller Industrial, one of Canada’s largest rubber lining and pressure piping fabricators.

Cutting-edge enterprise resource planning software has been acquired to streamline Fuller Western’s business and production processes, said Stern.

“Every step of every job is bar-coded, so we have real-time capture of every step in the process. It’s great for our customers because they can access a password protected Web site to check on the status of their jobs.”

The system also automates the production of spool drawings, eliminating human error and streamlining the review and approval process.

Fuller Western’s commitment to quality workmanship, quick turnaround and excellent customer service offers resource companies in Western Canada a partner they can count on for all of their pipe fabrication, rubber lining and powder coating needs.

For further information, please contact Jeff Stern at 780-979-0518, ext 222, or email jeff.stern@fullerwestern.ca, or visit www.FullerWestern.ca.
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Walk through any part of Sudbury’s Fuller Industrial and before long, you’ll find charts.

Whether it’s the shop floor where pipes are being measured and cut for transportation overseas or the picturesque lakeside office of president, Jeff Fuller, charts, of all kinds, are everywhere.

Pumped out as regularly as the pipes and rubber lining that have made the company an ever-growing success, the graphs illustrate anything from daily production to efficiency targets.

Jeff Fuller says they’re a sign of the company’s embrace of an accountability-based management system due to a philosophy of continuous improvement. Fuller swears by the system and the results don’t lie: his sales have doubled year over year, with staff levels tripling since 2008, a location in western Canada and an eye on further expansion.

“I didn’t invent it; we’re just taking that philosophy and we’re going into markets where we know they’re growth markets and not declining markets,” says Fuller.

“We’re applying this strategy. We have been successful and we will continue to be successful.”

Fuller has business in his blood. In 1979, his father, Bill Fuller, founded Abraflex Ltd., a Sudbury-based fabrication, machining and rubber lining company.

It was this history that lent Fuller the confidence to strike out on his own in 2004, with a vision of growing beyond the Sudbury basin and a belief he could take things “to the next level.”

It’s something Fuller says he’s now achieving, with a $10-million Madagascar project completed last year, as well as a project with Consolidated Thompson’s Bloom Lake Iron Ore project in northern Quebec, to name just two. Other mining-related work currently on the books for the new year include projects in the Dominican Republic and the Yukon.

“There’s a lot of opportunity if you want to go get it, and I think that’s the bottom line.”

While mining remains the backbone of his business, as it has since it began, Fuller is also finding explosive success from branching out into other markets. These include oil and gas, power, water and wastewater treatment and with the potential for even entering nuclear markets.

To take even further advantage of these opportunities, Fuller Industrial has diversified beyond just pipe fabrication and rubber lining into a variety of specialty pipe coatings such as powders, ceramic lining and fireproofing.

“We fill a transport and a half every day. A year ago, we would have had trouble filling a transport in two weeks.”

His ambition also led him to set up Fuller Western, a 36,000-square-foot shop in Edmonton, in September 2008 through a joint venture with regional partners he’s since bought out, making him the sole owner. With a staff of 25, it caters largely to western Canada and the chemical, gas and oil sands industries in particular.

With various large-scale industrial developments on horizon for eastern Canada, Fuller is also turning his eye towards potentially setting up shop in Quebec. The strong downturn in the United States may also offer some opportunities to establish a plant in that country as well, he says.

The next step in the company’s evolution remains to be seen, but Fuller muses it may involve moving towards front-end processes with engineering work, or even the other end, with the installation of the things they produce.

To accommodate these changes while continuing to prepare for the future, Fuller has built up a strong team, from the welders on the shop floor to the executives at the top.

“I’ll put my crew up against any other in the world,” says Fuller with a broad smile.

This rapid, measured growth has also meant beefing up staff levels. The Sudbury office alone has tripled to 85 employees over the space of just one year.

This shift has also required the addition of high-profile people like Ken Passmore, formerly the senior trade advisor for Trade Northern Ontario, and vice-president of General Motors’ export subsidiary in Canada and the United States. Passmore, who Fuller refers to as “an absolute dynamo,” now serves as executive vice-president of business development and marketing at Fuller Industrial.

Some of the company’s overall success can be traced back to its association with former Essar Steel CEO Denis Turcotte, who acts as an independent consultant with the company.

Initially connected through Jim Noble, formerly of the Northern Ontario Enterprise Gateway, Fuller unexpectedly found himself having to prove himself worthy of Turcotte’s attention.

“He’s here, and I think I’m interviewing him because I know he charges a long dollar, but he’s interviewing me, because he doesn’t want to screw around with someone who’s going to waste his time,” says Fuller, laughing.

The partnership has resulted in a more streamlined business, with the former CEO helping to identify and iron out organizational flaws, with enhanced sales and productivity.

“God bless Denis Turcotte,” chuckles Fuller.
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Jeff Fuller, President and CEO, Fuller Industrial Corporation, Sudbury, Ontario is pleased to announce that Ken Passmore has joined the company as Vice President, Business Development. Ken brings to Fuller Industrial over 30 years experience in international marketing and business development, primarily with General Motors. In positions as VicePresident (and Board member), General Motors Market Development of Canada Limited, as Vice-President, General Motors Overseas Distribution Corporation, Detroit, and as Special Projects Director, SAAB Automobile Company, Sweden/Singapore, his worldwide responsibilities included the marketing and sale of vehicles, locomotives, mining equipment in addition to overseas assembly plant contracts (and construction) and the opening of new markets. Ken’s extensive experience in working with governments and regulatory authorities, including his position while living in Dubai as Advisor to the ruling Maktoum family, will greatly
facilitate Fuller Industrial’s growth in the global mining, nuclear, oil and gas, water treatment and desalination sectors.

Before joining General Motors, Ken taught law and lived in the Caribbean for four years as an Assistant Vice-President in international banking. His diversity of experience and interests led him to help found a private school in Canada based on the International Baccalaureate, was a Vice-Chair, Rosseau Lake College, and is a Board member of an emissions company that he helped found in the United Kingdom. Throughout his career, Ken remained in touch with his agricultural upbringing and operated an organic beef farm until recently.

Since taking early retirement from General Motors, Ken has accepted business development and marketing assignments around the world, and for the last two years directing the Ministry of Industry/FedNor sponsored Trade Northern Ontario trade development program for northern Ontario. Ken is a resident of Muskoka and is active in community organizations and events. His broad experience will greatly assist Fuller Industrial in effectively maximizing the company’s potential in both domestic and international markets for its engineered piping systems, pipe fabrication and rubber lining and valve products. Fuller Industrial has production facilities in Sudbury, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta and is opening a branch office and warehouse in Montreal in November 2009.
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