Industrial Gearbox Repair, Industrial Gearbox Overhaul, and Industrial Gearbox Refurbishment Success with Allen Gears Services
03 November 2005 14:32
Allen Gears Aftermarket Services continues to expand, developing a flow of new business that demonstrates the business's technical reach, its ability to react quickly and its determination to compete across the entire high-integrity gear sector. Managing Director, Neil Whittaker, takes a look at several recent Aftermarket developments
Servicing of Gears
"We've been talking recently with Amarillo Gears of the United States about ways in which we can both gain market advantage. The outcome is a deal in which we provide maintenance capability on their specialist equipment - principally firepump drive gearboxes for the offshore industry and cooling-tower fan drives for power stations - throughout Amarillo's UK-based trading area.
This means operators of Amarillo gearboxes in the UK trading area can now have them serviced promptly and to fully approved, industry-leading standards without having to return them to the US. That's a useful marketing advantage to Amarillo and a positive development for us that has the potential to bring consistent and worthwhile new business while expanding our service portfolio. "
Indian gearbox repair
India is a potentially massive market for us, both for original equipment and aftermarket services. On the service side we've recently appointed a new agent in India, Spectrum Technologies.
Our new agent has a good contact network and a firmly aggressive approach and already some £0.6m of service business is flowing our way from the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC). We have also started to service spare parts on previously-supplied Allen Gears products for GAIL, the Indian gas organisation.
Our agent's efforts mean we're also building valuable contacts with existing operators and prospective customers. So far these are mainly in the oil and gas sector but the potential throughout India for high-integrity gearbox servicing across a range of markets, including marine, is big. India is definitely an increasingly important part of the world for us, now and in the longer term.
Gearbox maintenance for GE operators
I'm also pleased to report that we've recently signed a contract with GE to support them by providing maintenance of non-Allen gearboxes that equip their gas turbine-powered generator sets. So far this work is focusing on aero-derivative GE machines but we hope to extend it to maintenance of gearboxes on industrial gas turbines, as well.
We're working closely with the GE service centre in Basildon, Essex, which covers the UK and parts of Europe and we're already dealing with several enquiries from operators, who are quick to see the bottom-line advantages of our servicing expertise and smart turn-round times.
Gearbox repair for RB211
It's always good to see a job that's particularly well done and I'm thinking here of the way we recently sorted a real problem for Statoil, an off-shore operator in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
The gearbox of an RB211 generator drive unit provided by Rolls Wood around 15 years ago was giving trouble. It wasn't an Allen Gears unit, I hasten to say.
But in short we went to the platform, identified the problem, removed the faulty parts, organised replacements that we created through reverse engineering and supplied the new parts, all within a very short time. The customer and the operator are delighted and we were able to complete the job before the original gearbox manufacturer had even quoted for new parts, bringing downtime for the operator to the absolute minimum. It shows just how agile we are at Allen Gears Aftermarket Services! "
For more information on this company:
Allen Gears - Epicyclic, Parallel Shaft and Combination Gearbox Manufacturer and Service Provider
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