Tell us about the business.
Vulcan is distributor of metal, aluminium and steel with 2 locations in Mackay. Our site in Dozer Drive stocks Stainless Steel and Engineering Steel products and our site in Maggiolo Drive stocks Aluminium products. We have 37 other sites across Australia and 30 sites in New Zealand.
How long have you been doing business?
Vulcan has been in business almost 30 years. The first branch was opened in Auckland in 1995.
How many people work for the business?
In Mackay, we employ 21 people across our two sites.
Describe a typical day at ‘The office’.
A typical day for our team would involve quoting and taking orders from our many customers from Gladstone up to Bowen and out west to Emerald – in many cases we are required to provide a same day pick up or delivery service as many of our customers are involved in the repair and maintenance sector servicing the mining industry. If we don’t have it, we will find it.
What’s the best thing about the business?
We have a great team who love having a laugh, we don’t have a lot staff turnover so our customers and our staff get to build long lasting relationships. The business encourages our sites to work hard on ensuring we have great breadth and depth of stock. This means that we rarely have to disappoint our customers with delays in supplying their needs.
The worst thing?
When we do have someone move on from Vulcan, it’s always hard finding the right person to replace them – our cultural fit is one of our main considerations when hiring. But… we have 3 staff who have left and came back currently working here – I think that speaks volumes for our culture.
What are the biggest challenges facing your business?
Locally, it’s meeting the increasing demand for our products in the Mackay region – our team works hard to make sure we react quickly when new customers want to deal with us, we will add products to our range so that we can service them quicker. Nationally it’s keeping up with how fast the business is growing and expanding in new regional towns.
What is the biggest opportunity for your business right now?
We have just moved into a brand new purpose built facility in Paget which has allowed us to carry much more stock and we have invested heavily in Stainless Steel products to service the area much quicker than we have previously been able to do.
What is the business most proud of?
Vulcan in Mackay is proud of our growth. 10 years ago we had 6 staff and we have grown to 14 on this site. From a service point of view, we pride ourselves on delivery performance and we consistently achieve above 98% DIFOT.
Community or other causes close to its heart and values?
We support the Special Childrens Christmas Party in Mackay each year and have done since 2006.
Any employees that deserve a shout out?
The entire team deserve a shout out, the recent move into our new site was a huge task and everyone devoted extra time – including weekends – to get the job done. We even had volunteers from other branches all across Australia come up to lend a hand for 2 weeks – the collaboration across our business is amazing to watch in action.
