R&S Grating: All in

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R&S Grating’s rich 50-year history reflects its stability, expertise and drive to stay at the forefront of the grating industry.

R&S Grating’s history is rooted in family and humble beginnings.

From a small stable in Mentone, Victoria, the company has grown to become a well-known entity in the grate space, as well as one of the few grate vendors that still designs and manufactures in Australia.

As a second-generation employee, Tim Hockham, Product Development – R&S Grating says the company stands out from others due to its family business feel, matched with the capability and innovation you’d typically find in a larger corporation.

He says one example of the company’s innovative approach to grates and covers has been R&S Grating’s SMC composite lids, a plastic alternative to conventional concrete covers.

“It’s a moulded, plastic lid that’s supplied with a steel frame around the edge. They were originally designed to replace heavy concrete lids, which have long been an OH&S maintenance nightmare for local authorities,” he says.

“The composite lids are ideal for driveways or in the nature strip, they only weigh 20-25 kilograms but at the same time, they’re up to 10 times stronger than the concrete lids they were designed to replace. There’s a big push in Victoria to replace concrete lids with these, so all councils are on board because they can send out just one person to open it, instead of sending out someone with a mini crane.”

Since its launch, the SMC composite lid range has continued to expand, becoming R&S Grating’s single largest growth product over close to two decades.

“We introduced our SMC composite lids around 15 years ago. We’re now the market leader in Victoria. Other companies have started to make their own, but we’ve become the dominant force by continuing to push the bounds of innovation, striving for our lids to be the lightest, strongest and safest,” Hockham says.

These products are just a relative splash in the pond when it comes to R&S Grating’s total product offering, which has been evolving since day one in 1974.

Hockham says celebrating the company’s 50-year milestone gave him an opportunity to reflect on R&S Grating’s history and origins, as well as the values that have guided the company for generations.

The passing of his father Stephen (R&S Grating’s Founder), a major driver in establishing these values and the company culture, presented a significant challenge in 2024. Hockham says the legacy of his late father is embedded in R&S Grating’s identity.

“It really just showed the type of company that we are,” he says. “The whole business came together as one big family to console each other and to celebrate his life.”

The strong family ethic and feel of the business is also partly due to R&S Grating’s refusal to move from its strong roots manufacturing in Melbourne, remaining a local business that supports local suppliers and projects.

Hockham says the company’s local manufacturing and distribution capabilities can provide a variety of benefits for customers in Victoria and interstate.

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“We do a lot of the design work here. We’ll go out to site, have a look at the ground conditions, then make a prototype solution to see if that would work,” Hockham says. “If the council or whoever we’re supplying is happy with that solution, we can mass produce it.

“If we were solely an import company, we wouldn’t have that capability.”

This has also provided a competitive advantage, especially for products such as R&S Grating’s trench gates, as Steve Skinner, National Sales and Business Development Manager – R&S Grating, explains.

“We looked across the market to see what was out there and it was all one-metre sections. The innovation was to develop a product that was available in one metre, 1.5, 2.5 and all the way up to three metres,” he says

“It caught on and before you know it, we had a steady sweep of people coming into the driveway and picking up trench grating, almost supermarket style. The big benefit of us being a local manufacturer for the trench gate is that it’s a difficult product to import as a finished product because it’s got bulky elements.

“As a result, no one’s really got a product offering to compete. It just shows the strength of local manufacturing.”

To make sure every product is “up to scratch”, R&S Grating has a design and testing team, responsible for ensuring that products not only satisfy regulatory requirements, but also surpass expectations.

“We have a dedicated team that does batch testing on all our products. Simultaneously, they’ll develop prototypes that are then tested to see how they perform against expectations,” Hockham says.

Through its strong ties to local industry, as well as its growing base of council customers, R&S Grating has direct access and understanding of what the transport sector is looking for. This, along with its ability to quickly respond to manufacturing requests, is why the company has quickly climbed the grate offering ladder. So has R&S Grating’s ability to stay up to date with – and sometimes ahead – of the latest regulatory changes.

Just one example is the company’s aforementioned SMC composite lid offering, where R&S Grating was already ahead of the regulatory curve, having developed a full-depth composite cover before changes to the standard necessitated such a design.

“Once the requirements changed, we were suddenly in a leading position,” Skinner says. “We’d already done the legwork.”

He says keeping ahead of the rest is what drives the team, with the company aware of the need to innovate and improve to remain a pioneer in the grating space.

“We have to constantly try and improve the product; you can’t just rest on your laurels. It’s a more competitive market now, and gets harder every year,” he says.

“It’s quite easy these days to import a container of grates in a paddock somewhere and sell from there, that’s the type of setups that we have to compete with. But if you go to one of those places, you don’t get the overall service, you don’t get quality. You get an inferior and cheaper product.

“That’s what drives us, to keep innovating and optimising, while providing the best possible service.”

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