TEP Technica is a one-stop shop for customers seeking top quality wheels and castors. With a wealth of experience here in the UK and with the support of market leading manufacturer Räder Vogel, TEP Technica offers full technical support to customers seeking to develop new products, as well as helping those who are looking for direct replacements or alternatives for existing applications.

Simon Downs
Sales and Marketing Director

With their wide range of materials handling truck specific wheels, alongside wheels and castors for general industrial applications, TEP Technica is not just renowned for their extensive product knowledge. The variety and volume of their UK stock is impressive, allowing them to ship 98% of goods on the day the customer’s order was received.

Simon Downs, Sales and Marketing Director, speak to Warehouse and Logistics News.

What are your best-known products ?

Fundamentally, TEP Technica supplies high quality wheels and castors for pretty much every materials handling and general industrial application you can think of. We are experts in what we do and we have the support of world leading manufacturers. We are the largest dealer world-wide for Räder Vogel Räder und Rollenfabrik GMBH & Co Kg , whose portfolio of industrial wheels and castors, including the popular tread material Vulkollan®, is second to none.

Which market sectors and countries are your customers engaged in?

You will find products we have supplied on our customers’ equipment in many applications here in the UK and around the world, including :-

• Aerial Lift and Access Platforms

• Automatic Guided Vehicles

• Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems

• Automotive Assembly

• Baggage Handling Systems

• Conveyor Systems

• Forklift Trucks

• Lifts, Escalators and Moving Walks

• Sorting and Picking Systems

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Who are your major customers and what do you do for them?

Several of our customers are household names but, no matter who they are, they are all important to us and can expect the same high level of product quality and service. Some customers may need our advice when developing new products, some seek performance improving alternatives to existing products and some are simply seeking like-for-like replacements.

How do you help your customers with product selection?

We have many years of experience and our customers know that they can have trust in the advice we offer and in the consistent quality of the products we supply. When it comes to the choices of castors, wheel rims or tread materials the “one size fits all” philosophy simply does not apply because not all environments are the same, and some can be very challenging indeed. This is why we offer environment and application specific wheels and castors for use in places such as foundries, 24/7 warehouses, marine applications, cold stores, applications requiring explosion protection and many more uses besides. For most applications we can offer suitable wheel and castor constructions, including a variety of tread materials best suited to the particular environment in which the equipment operates. At the last count, we offer 13 premium polyurethane based tread materials alone, including Vulkollan® which is often the go to product for warehouse trucks. Whether our customers need wheels or castors the variety we offer is vast. Suffice to say, if they want simple nylon swivel castors of 50kg capacity or 50 Tonne capacity wheels, they are both in our portfolio.

Why should customers choose you as their main supplier?

It is one thing to offer good products, which we do, but our customers also require sound technical advice and prompt delivery. Which is why we are here to help and why, just to meet current customers’ demands, we hold more than 3500 SKUs on the shelf and ready to ship to wherever they are required. Of course, we also stock products for general sale and the full list of what we can supply is around 30000 in number. I don’t intend to count them all because the wheel is still being invented!

What’s business been like in the past year?

Every year brings its own challenges, but I am pleased to say that, on the whole, last year was very good for us. We continued to win over new customers and we saw growth across all the markets we operate in. Overall, we saw double digit growth in our sales and our customer base continued to grow.

What’s been your most outstanding recent project?

We were delighted to add another world leading manufacturer of automation and logistics solutions to our continuously expanding list of customers who seek products which are specifically for their applications.

What recent enhancements have you made in customer service?

The latest version of our website recently went live and we are delighted with the very positive feedback we are receiving from our customers; which tells us that it’s development was time and money well spent. If you don’t believe me, go to www.technicawheels.co.uk and check it out! The site allows customers to search products, access detailed specifications and real time stock availability and buy on a trustworthy and reliable platform.

I should also mention that, in the face of increasing manufacturing lead-times, and with potential delays resulting from Brexit, which is just around the corner, we have increased our stock holding significantly to ensure that we maintain the high level of product availability demanded by most of our customers.

What new products have you brought out?

We have recently introduced several new customer specific products which I cannot talk about here. Those apart, I recommend taking a look at our website to see the breadth and depth of our current offering.

Are you planning to branch into any new products or target new customers We plan for growth and we will certainly continue to add products to our portfolio whilst concentrating on our core business as a market leading supplier of high quality, cost competitive, wheels and castors for all materials handling and general industrial applications.

Are you investing in new premises and extra staff?

We are always thinking about how to better use the space we have available and we have already expanded our warehouse capacity, but we would certainly not rule out moving to larger premises in our local area if the need arose. We are a “clicks and mortar” business servicing all our customers from our site in north Hampshire. This model works very well and we do not plan to change it, in the medium term at least.

We are very fortunate because we currently have the right number of team members, all of whom are skilled in what they do. Are you involved in any major trade shows or other industry events over the next year? We have exhibited at trade shows and we do not rule out doing so again, but our website and hard copy advertising are very useful marketing tools which meet our current needs.

What big news from Tep-Technica can our readers look forward to seeing in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2019?

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it wouldn’t be such big news in 2019 if I told you now.

And finally, if you had to sum up your company in a tweet what would it be?

TEP Technica #technicawheels

TEP TECHNICA LTD

01256 763744

enquiries@teponline.co.uk

www.technicawheels.co.uk

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