Austin Engineering is a leading designer and manufacturer of customised dump truck trays, buckets, and water tanks used in the global mining industry.

With manufacturing operations across four continents, Austin is also a complete service provider, offering on and off-site repair and maintenance and heavy equipment lifting services to customers including miners, mining contractors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Austin’s 2022 acquisition of Australian-based specialist bucket manufacturer, Mainetec, added an extensive range of high-quality, industry-leading mining buckets to Austin’s existing suite.

The acquisition gave Austin access to Mainetec’s Hulk range of high-performance mining buckets. The Hulk buckets complement Austin’s JEC bucket range and the dual-product offering will increase Austin’s bucket market share in Australia, especially on the East Coast where Mainetec has a well-established presence.

Austin is now offering Mainetec’s high-value dipper buckets into its global markets, particularly North and South America, where there is high demand and a large dipper bucket market. Austin sold its first Mainetec-designed dipper bucket into the US market in 2023. The Armadillo electric rope shovel dipper bucket is due for delivery by mid-2024.

Austin’s CEO and Managing Director, David Singleton said: “We identified Mainetec as an innovative and entrepreneurial business that fitted our strategy to become a leading designer and manufacturer of customised mining buckets. Mainetec has allowed us to grow our bucket market offering domestically and internationally, particularly in the Americas, where a large dipper bucket market exists.

“The Armadillo bucket ordered from the US will be designed in Australia, manufactured in our facility in Batam, Indonesia, and will be supported by our US business in Casper, Wyoming. This process demonstrates Austin’s global reach and capabilities.”

Austin has established specialist bucket ‘centre of excellence’ in Perth, Western Australia, where it is able to produce the entire Austin and Mainetec range of buckets.

Austin’s purchase of Mainetec also came with its state-of-the-art condition monitoring software which Austin is able to fit to all of its buckets.

The condition monitoring software provides a precise, fleetwide overview of buckets and trays to improve annual product replacement planning. This approach helps to maximise product life, and thereby reduce costs and greenhouse emissions by ensuring buckets and trays are not withdrawn before required.