Safety barriers: Problem & Solution | James Smith (A-SAFE) #ConversacionesSafeguru

Hi Mellissa, thank you for having me on to talk about A-SAFE and myself and I'm looking forward to the interview.

Hi everyone, I'm James Smith, I'm the Co-Owner and Director of A-SAFE. I'd describe myself as a person with entrepreneurial spirit. So someone who, well I love to build, make things and always willing to try something new in order to learn and develop to be the best I am. And also, I 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.

Yes, I joined the family business in the year 2000, so 21 years ago, straight after university and have been part of a growing business to where it is today. So I've worked in most parts of the business from production, marketing, sales and general management of the business. At the time of joining the business, primarily what it did was a plastic extrusion business and we made plastic tubes for the UK market. However, it's always been our nature to try and create new products, new solutions and this has included things like plastic pallets, parts for horse jumps, plastic decking and loads of other things. But in 2001, we invented the world's first fixed polymer safety barrier as a solution actually for our own factory. The majority of my time has been spent growing the business, initially in the UK and then internationally. And internationally we've grown, and it now includes 17 wholly owned A-SAFE subsidiaries around the world.

Yes, so A-SAFE, we design, we manufacture, we advise and sell 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 around the world. I would say globally we're the number one supplier of polymer safety barriers. So A-SAFE, we've helped drive the importance of correct protection for people and their assets in the industrial workplace. Traffic management has and is becoming a big topic for the industrial workplace, especially around the segregation of people and vehicles. However, there's very little guidance of when or how you separate people. So like, when do you use a white line or when do you need to use a safety barrier? And if so, how do you know it's suitable? Will the chosen safety barrier stop a particular vehicle at a certain speed and protect the machine or the racking or ultimately save someone's life? So A-SAFE has pushed and is pushing this agenda to the front, to drive the right protection, for the right application into the minds of people around all these workplaces around the world in the industrial working environment.

Yeah, A-SAFE has come about and continually developed from solving problems, especially our customer problems, and I feel that the three important things that stand out for me are great service and relationships with our customers, manufacturing and making things and finally innovation, constantly trying to improve and be the forefront of what we do. So, looking back at A-SAFE's past, Flexi barrier, what was born in 2001, the original name for the A-SAFE safety barrier was actually started from an idea that came about from a plastic pallet. We had a showroom and we had a load of plastic pallets what we used to manufacture, all stood up in a row and we thought those plastic pallets looked a bit like a fence. So we had the idea of selling a plastic fencing. But it was always quite a bit of a struggle because we were competing against wood fencing and the price could be five, ten times the price. So anyway, we had the idea of the fence. At a similar time, our insurance company came around to our factory and they were asking us to put a load of steel barriers around things like heaters, walkways, machinery to protect them. So we were buying a lot of steel safety barriers for our own factory. And we were finding we had to repair them, we had to paint them, and they were always getting hit by forktrucks, especially on the night shift it seemed. So anyway, after spending a lot of money on this steel barriers, we thought, why not use this fence idea what we had? So we adapted the plastic fencing into a safety barrier, found a way of fixing it to the ground, and we'd had a lot of experience with polymers and making high impact resistant materials. We'd done that for plastic horse jumps what we used to manufacture and for the plastic pallets, what were thrown around by forktrucks anyway, so we used this material technology that we'd invented and we put it into this fence, or the Flexi barriers we called it and put it around our factory. So that was the birth of the world's first polymer fixed to the ground safety barrier. And it was solving a problem for our own factory. We then thought, yeah, this is a great product, let's try and sell this product to some of our customers. We did a little bit of a marketing mailshot, sent it around to our customers and one of our first customers was Alcan Packaging. They made aluminium for the likes of Coca-Cola, for the cans for Coke and they bought about 500 meters for their factory. So that was the birth of Flexi barrier. In 2005 we rebranded that as A-SAFE and really then from one product, it's evolved and evolved into lots of products. We've got tens of tens and tens of different types of safety barriers and safety protection what have all come about really from solving problems of our customers. Now we're on generation three of our safety barrier, what we call an iFlex and we've evolved into lots of new products. And one of the latest things is, RackEye, what's a full IoT device and what monitors the health of your racking, it gives 24/7 monitoring and tells you whenever there's been an impact. We're always about trying something new and listening to our customers and solving their problems or getting inspiration from our customers to solve their problems and bring out new products.

Yes, well, initially, our main competition was steel barriers, and it probably still is. However, since people are really understanding the benefits, of A-SAFE there's been more and more polymer safety barrier competitors coming into the market and many trying to replicate what we do. I'd say we remain the biggest player in the market because of the quality we offer, we're two to three times bigger than all our competitors combined. And many times we've had customers buy alternative polymer solutions. And then, for example, one year later, they've come back and replaced what they bought with A-SAFE because the performance was not the same as what they thought. So we're quite unique in the market as well, we're the only company that fully designs the products in-house, fully manufactures everything, and then independently tests and certifies our products to PAS 13 using TÜV Nord and then sell directly to the end user.

Yeah PAS 13, PAS stands for Publicly Available Specification and it's really a sponsored norm or a sponsored standard for industries, so an industry standard. So currently prior to PAS 13 there was not a standard or a norm in the industry for traffic management and safety barriers. A-SAFE sponsored the creation of this industry standard and it's all about where to use a safety barrier, when to use a safety barrier in the industrial workplace, and also how to test their performance and rate a safety barriers. It's really there to help users understand the performance rating of a safety barrier and be able to compare like for like, apples to apples of what they're buying.

Yes, many, many new things have gone on in the business, as I said in our history, we were initially an extrusion company, but our whole philosophy of A-SAFE is not necessarily to manufacture to our capability, but to actually manufacture what's best to the product design so then we've learned how to injection mold and we're currently going to bring in by the end of the year 17 injection molding machines. Then we've gone into rotational molding so we've brought that skill in-house and had to learn those techniques. We've got a mill machine to cut the products. We've had to learn a lot of new manufacturing techniques and we've implemented those over the years. And then as the business has grown, we used to be 20 people are now going on to 600 people by the end of the year in the group. And we've had to bring in new computer systems and into place. So we're just implementing a new ERP system, what's a huge task for the business and actually a challenge what's never straightforward, but it is there to help us grow and continue our growth as we move forward.

Yeah, the pandemic, I mean ways of working has been a big thing for the business and we've had to change, with people working at home from the offices and the factory has been fully operational so we've had to organise it in a Covid secure manner, so the challenges of working safely, but also learning how to collaborate differently and that's a big thing still in the business, how we collaborate and work well and ultimately provide a good service to our customers. Through the pandemic we've been extremely busy, at A-SAFE we can focus our efforts on any industry. The benefit for our business is we can focus on any business, what's got people or vehicles or buildings that need protecting. Our sales has changed and some of the sectors did go quiet, but we became extremely busy because we could focus on other industries such as logistics or healthcare, or e-commerce, where they were busy. In some situations, we were actually classed as suppliers as a support in essential industries. And we actually grew over 40 percent last year. So, yeah, the pandemic was and still is very challenging because of the changes and also because we're still very busy and growing.

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

I'd just like to thank you for the chance to talk to you a bit about A-SAFE as an introduction, I'm kind of really, really excited about A-SAFE and the future and telling everyone of the new developments. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mellissa.