How does Vortex maintain a high level of consistency and quality in each and every one of their products?
We are always up to the latest ISO standards for manufacturing, which proves our engineering quality and accountability. We quality check every single product before it is shipped out, and those tests vary from product to product. So, if a product needs to seal a certain pressure, we bench-test every one; we don’t take a sample out and test it. That way we know when a product goes out of the facility, it has been tested – every single one – to uphold these standards.
Vortex is very heavily involved in grains and food, and the feed side. Today, Vortex is 26 percent food-feed, 20 percent minerals, 25 percent original equipment manufacturers (OEM) etc… How would you explain this development? Has it been company-driven? Have you sought out to diversify into those industries, or has it happened organically?
It’s a bit of both. I think when you’re seeking to provide value for people, you get entered into conversations and it comes naturally. Also, the products themselves are designed to be versatile, so they cross over industries quite a lot.
By nature of where Vortex was born, in the wheat fields of Kansas, it was quite evident that’s where our first opportunities would be, in the flour and feed mills. My grandfather was a bit of a pioneer in material handling and pneumatic conveying systems for the grain and milling industry. That’s where he really honed his craft as a pneumatic conveying engineer. He then started getting into other materials and developed miniature systems to test velocity, pressure, and material bulk density. Through his experience in doing that for the grain and milling industry, he created our core products which we still sell today. So, when he got his first patent in 1980 it was really born from his experience in the feed and grain industry.
Vortex has grown over the last 20 years and in 2006, a division was established in the UK. What is the story behind that? What made you move to set up here, in Europe and the UK?
When I started, Vortex had less than 100 employees. Now, we have more than 400 employees; so it has grown quite a lot. In 2006, I sat down with the Vortex Sales Manager, who said the company wanted to grow and expand our export business. Because of my background in international business and previous work abroad, I recommended we start with Canada and Mexico. It quickly dawned on us that our customers are multinational customers, and that was both an opportunity and a threat. As the world was really going into this globalisation cycle, logistics were easy to get.
We realised international growth was both our offense and defence. We didn’t have any customers here (in the UK) that we were talking to directly. Because we had no brand recognition in Europe, we came over and spoke to our OEM customers. It took three to four years to really establish our brand. It takes a long time, so we always approach business decisions with a long-term perspective.
If you are looking to convince someone to change their loading bay from an existing system with socks to your loading chute system, how would you go about it from a return on investment perspective? In what way would you quantify that this is going to cost you, but you are probably going to get that back? What would the tangible cost-savings be that you think might persuade them?
Dust management is difficult to quantify when it comes to return on investment. Sure, you will have some spillage and waste, but bespoke engineering offers savings by significantly reducing spillage and waste. But what I think most operators have weighing on their mind is liability. What is the cost of an employee getting hurt because they’ve slipped on materials accumulating on the floor, or ill because they’ve developed respiration problems? You have crystalline silica, for example, that is a huge issue. If someone breathes in silica dust, they can develop silicosis – a fatal lung disease. There are risks that grain and milling companies are exposed to also. If you have a dust explosion because of fugitive dust in a loading bay, that’s the company’s responsibility. Infestations are also big issues in mills, and if you allow grain and flour dust to just sit, then you allow spoilage to contaminate your own product.
And so it’s the well-being of everyone. My take on it, really, is you’re preventing these major liabilities. What is that worth to you?
Are there any new projects that Vortex is working on right now?
Yes, I would say there are three things that we are working on that will be newer to the industry. One is the ship loader for handling grain. We are starting to do a lot more of these projects. This ship loader moves bulk materials at one tonne per second. Like all loading chutes, it is also gravity-fed. We’re really starting to push that in the industry.
The other thing is that our loading chutes are now certified for ATEX Zone 20 internal and 21 and 22, for dust environments. This means our equipment adheres to the highest standards for dust explosion prevention. Our equipment has been certified and designed so that it cannot create a source of ignition to airborne dust, which is fairly critical in the grain and flour industries. All of our valve equipment also has that rating.
The third project is we’ve developed a pivoting chute diverter valve, designed for handling highly abrasive products with a lot of throughput; so that certainly includes grain. The bucket pivots back and forth to distribute into different legs, and we have some pretty high tolerances for that, so you get minimal dusting into other legs. We can make the bucket out of Hardox 400, so you’ve got an AR400 bucket with AR400 legs, as standard. Our equipment is really meant for lifetime use. We have also made it very maintenance-friendly. You can access and remove the bucket to do inspections of it while the valve remains in situ. We have designed it for the end-user.
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