I worked for Korvest briefly (for 3 months) @SudMav after I got my redundancy from FH Faulding (which became Mayne Pharma) but before I worked for Salmat and then Coca-Cola Amatil (and then Obela) and it was mostly labouring although my title was head of robotics on afternoon shift at Korvest.

They had one robot that MIG-welded the rungs onto the side bars of those cable trays. We called them cable ladders, or just ladders. Yeah, just the one robot (in the whole factory) - not much of a robotics division.

Apart from their galvanizing division which was up the back of the factory, the cable tray division - the main part of EzyStrut - was their busiest, and this was 18 or 19 years ago.

They couldn't keep up with demand even then and we were manufacturing them 16 hours per day, five days per week back then.

They would have either added a night shift or added another jig setup and another welding robot since then.

The job mostly involved checking the ladders (cable trays) were correctly welded, lifting them out and stacking them to be taken up the back to be galvanized, then laying out all the steel (sides and rungs, in the jig) and then pressing the go button on the robot again.

I occasionally had to make program adjustments which was fairly straightforward as long as you remembered the 3 parameters, X = north/south, Y = east/west, Z = up/down, so nothing too hard, just guessing how much to adjust could be tricky. And occasionally changing a spool of welding wire, but otherwise just lots of lifting, carrying and stacking.

It was the most misleading job title of any job I've ever done, and I've done a few.

They didn't pay much above award wages, so I moved on to a higher paid and cleaner job after 3 months.

There was just me and one labourer there to grab the other ends of the finished ladders, and the steel side bars when setting up for the robot. Two guys on day shift and two on afternoons. And they sold everything we could make.

Later when working at Coke at Thebarton I saw their cable trays everywhere, as you would in a DC or anywhere that has a lot of electrical cabling that doesn't need to be hidden away.

Korvest still operate out of the same factory today, at the Grand Junction Rd end (north end) of Prospect Rd in Kilburn here in Adelaide.

Old style manufacturing except using a welding robot for the very repetitive welding. They had human welders there that did all the other welding - other than the cable tray welding. Everything else was done manually. Humans using machines or just moving stuff around (labouring), but nothing was automated except the rung welding (and even that was only semi-automated because all of the set-up has to be done by humans, only the actual welding was automated). Probably much the same today.

Profitable and steady growth, but they won't shoot the lights out I would guess.

Thanks for the into @Bear77. Seems like you have lots of experience across the board!!

I agree they aren’t one that will really shoot the lights out on growth but they have a small number of shares issued, decent p/e and keep paying out cash in big dividends.

If they can just keep orders and output at a relatively similar level for the next few years I’ll still be happy. I’m using the dividends received to put into other better growth opportunities.

i also have the benefit of getting in early ($2.2) so i can hold out a for a while in a watch and see capacity until circumstances change or I have a better investment idea. to date the share price has been increasing yoy so there’s no rush to make a decision just yet