Safety Barriers: Problem & Solution | James Smith (A-SAFE) #SafeguruTalks

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm here to talk about A-Safe for myself, and yeah, I'm looking forward to the interview.

Yeah, hi everyone. I'm James Smith. I'm the co-owner and director of A-Safe. I've described myself as a person with entrepreneurial spirit, someone who loves to build and make things and is always willing to try something new in order to learn and develop to be the best I can. And also I'd love to help other people be the best they can. Personally, I love spending time with my family and I love being active outdoors doing things like walking and biking.

Yeah, I joined the family business in the year 2000, 21 years ago, straight after university. I've been part of a growing business to where it is today. I've worked in most parts: production, marketing, sales, and general management. At the time, the business primarily was a plastic extrusion company making plastic chews for the UK market. However, it's always been our nature to try and create new products and solutions: plastic pallets, parts for horse jumps, plastic decking, and others. In 2001, we invented the world's first fixed polymer safety barrier, actually as a solution for our own factory. The majority of my time has been spent growing the business initially in the UK and then internationally. We now have 17 wholly owned A-Safe subsidiaries around the world.

Yeah, so A-Safe designs, manufactures, advises, and sells safety barriers and other safety protection in the industrial workplace. The headquarters is based in the north of England, and we have 17 subsidiary offices and warehouses around the world including all parts of Europe, USA, and Japan. We also have over 30 other partners. I would say globally we are the number one supplier of polymer safety barriers. A-Safe has helped drive the importance of correct protection for people and assets in the industrial workplace. Traffic management is becoming a big topic, especially around the segregation of people and vehicles. However, there is very little guidance on when or how to separate people: when do you use a white line or a safety barrier, and how do you know it's suitable? Will the chosen safety barrier stop a particular vehicle at a certain speed and protect machinery or racking, or ultimately save someone's life? So A-Safe is pushing this agenda to drive the right protection for the right application into the minds of people around workplaces worldwide.

Yeah, A-Safe has come about and continually developed from solving problems, especially our customers' problems. Three important things stand out: great service and relationships, manufacturing and making things, and innovation. Looking back, the Flexi Barrier was born in 2001. The original idea came from plastic pallets. We had a showroom with plastic pallets stood up in a row, and they looked like a fence. So we had the idea of selling plastic fencing, but it was a struggle competing against wood fencing at five to ten times the price. Then our insurance company came around and asked us to put steel barriers around heaters, walkways, machinery in our factory. We were buying a lot of steel and constantly having to repair and paint them as they kept getting hit. After spending a lot of money, we thought to use our fence idea and adapted the plastic fencing into a safety barrier. Using our experience with polymers and high impact resistant materials from horse jumps and plastic pallets, we created the Flexi Barrier and installed it in our factory. That was the birth of the world's first polymer fixed-to-the-ground safety barrier, solving a problem for our own factory. We then thought to sell it, did a mail shot to customers, and one of our first customers was Alcan packaging, who made aluminium for Coca-Cola cans. They bought about 500 meters. That was the birth of Flexi Barrier. In 2005 we rebranded to A-Safe. From that one product, it evolved into tens and tons of different types of safety barriers, all from solving customer problems. We are now on generation three, called iFlex, and we have evolved into new products like Rakai, a full IoT device that monitors the health of your rack, providing 24/7 monitoring and alerts when anything's been impacted. We are always about trying something new and listening to our customers to solve their problems.

Yeah.

Yes sir, well initially our main competition was steel barriers, and it probably still is. However, as people really understand the benefits of A-Safe, more polymer safety barrier competitors are coming into the market, many trying to replicate what we do. I'd say we remain the biggest player because of the quality we offer; we're two to three times bigger than all our competitors combined. Many times we've had customers buy alternative polymer solutions and then a year later come back and replace what they bought with A-Safe because the performance was not what they thought. So we're quite unique in the market. We're the only company that fully designs the products in-house, fully manufactures everything, then independently tests and certifies our products to PAS 13, and then sells direct to the end user.

Yeah, PAS 13 stands for Publicly Available Specification. It is a sponsored normal responses standard for industry. Before PAS 13, there was no standard or norm for traffic management and safety barriers. A-Safe sponsored the creation of this industry standard. It is all about where to use a safety barrier, when to use a safety barrier in the industrial workplace, and also how to test and performance rate safety barriers. It helps users understand the performance rating and compare apples to apples of what they're buying.

Yeah, many new things have gone on in the business. In our history we were initially an extrusion company, but our whole philosophy is not to manufacture to our capability but to manufacture what's best for the product design. So we have learned how to injection mold; we'll have 17 injection molding machines by the end of the year. We've gone into rotational molding, brought that skill in-house, learned those techniques. We've also learned to operate mill machines to cut products. We've implemented these new manufacturing techniques over the years. As the business grows, we used to be 20 people and now going on to 600 people by the end of the year in the group. We've had to bring in new computer systems, we're implementing a new ERP system, which is a huge task and a challenge, but it's there to help us grow and continue our growth.

Yeah, the pandemic has been a big thing. Ways of working: we had to change with people working from home from offices, and the factory has been fully operational so we organized it in a secure manner. The challenges of working safely and learning how to collaborate differently are still a big thing in the business, how we collaborate and provide good service to customers. Through the pandemic, we've been extremely busy. A-Safe can focus on any industry with people, vehicles, or buildings that need protecting. Our sales changed; some sectors went quiet, but we became extremely busy focusing on industries like logistics, healthcare, or e-commerce where they were busy. In some situations we were classed as a supplier supporting essential industries, and we grew over 40% last year. So the pandemic was and still is very challenging because of the changes and because we're still very busy and growing.

Yeah, I mean when I started, the business had approximately 20 to 25 people. We'll be over 600 by the end of the year, and we've been growing an average of 30% every year for the last seven years. Communication is a huge challenge and something we're working on all the time to improve. I am far from perfect and still learning how to adapt as we grow, and I'm trying to grow myself. However, I believe it's important that people understand why we exist, where we come from, and what our purpose is, and to live this through shared values of what we believe in. This is a program we've been pushing throughout the business. Ideally, I'd like to travel and meet people and explain what we're about, but the pandemic has been a challenge, so we've had to learn to use different media and different ways to communicate.

Um, I'd just like to thank you for the chance to talk about A-Safe as an introduction. I'm really excited about A-Safe in the future and telling everyone about the new development. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Melissa.