NOT ALL TOOLS ARE CREATED EQUAL SOME ARE POTENTIAL KILLERS 32 October 2016 P O W E R S Y S T E M S “Companies participating in this imitational market – sometimes unwittingly – are opening the door to safety and downtime risks when they are short-changed by counterfeit and look-alike products and service components that don’t offer the same quality, performance and reliability as the branded product,” says Denis Matulin, Enerpac regional manager Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. “We know imitation is supposed to be the highest form of flattery, but there are serious risks when companies are presented with cheap and inferior alternative products and service not conducted to world standards of safety and traceability,” says Mr Matulin. Enerpac, which has been a respected leader in the high pressure (700 bar, 10,000 psi) hydraulics field for more than 50 years in Australasia, practices a global 'Goal Zero' safety policy, through which it is committed to achieve its goal of zero harm to employees, customers and end-users of its technologies in Australia and worldwide. Genuine Enerpac hydraulic tools comply with all relevant standards, are fully traceable, and are backed in the field by Enerpac’s comprehensive network of service and distribution centres. “Substitute tools can look almost identical to Enerpac originals, but many have problems associated with poorer quality design, engineering and construction,” says Mr Matulin. “If you’re using these tools to lift, shift, position, service or maintain vital machinery or plant, why would you risk the significant downtime and costs associated with tool failure? “Compounding this problem, when the customer goes looking for service or accountability after a failure or accident, there may be no-one at home and no forwarding address. “It’s possible that not only entire tools, but even component parts such as valves, seals, hoses and oils can be counterfeited and buyers can unknowingly accept these as genuine. These anonymous components are easier to disguise as genuine, but they can come under the greatest stress in hydraulic circuits, for example, where you have the greatest risk to the safety of operators. “Our own Enerpac organisation – which is Australasia’s largest supplier of high-force tools – has encountered warranty claims recently from people who believed it was our product which had let them down – only to discover it was non-genuine material which had failed. “These problems are always accentuated during leaner economic times, when intense price competition opens up the market to inexperienced operators who offer non-standard parts and consumables in an effort to win jobs at any cost.” If something goes wrong during a 100-tonne lift or pressing operation, the consequences can be immediate and devastating in industries such as construction, civil and mechanical engineering, electrical utilities, manufacturing, mining and exploration, metal processing, oil and gas and transport maintenance. Mr Matulin says no-one has any quibbles with companies trying to save money with healthy competition among companies with genuine branded products. “We all have to be competitive to survive these days. So our focus has been to bring products to the market that offer the best efficiency gains, the best ergonomics, the greatest safety and traceability and the best backing anywhere, whether it is in the infrastructure projects of New Zealand or the outback mines of Australia, or anywhere in between. “Our argument is not with fair competition. Our dispute is with imitation and substitution. Such as whole catalogues we have encountered of non-Enerpac products that look very much like our own at first glance. They may even use the same part numbers, but that’s where the similarities stop.” And frequently it’s not the customers buying the Global hydraulics supplier Enerpac says operators and businesses dependent on hydraulic tools are inviting safety and downtime risks when they are short-changed by look-alike products that don’t offer the same quality, traceability, performance and reliability as the branded alternative.
EN-Oct16
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