Hastings Deering leverages nearly a century of expertise, advanced data analysis and a full suite of repair, rebuild and maintenance solutions to keep fleets running longer and smarter.
In an industry where uptime is everything, repair and rebuild strategies can make or break a mine site’s productivity. Few companies understand this better than Hastings Deering.
With more than nine decades experience as a Caterpillar (Cat) dealer, Hastings Deering’s approach to repair and rebuild services is grounded in one clear goal: to deliver the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for every asset across its entire lifecycle.
Hastings Deering offers a number of repair options – from bespoke repairs to certified component and machine rebuilds to genuine Cat parts and exchange parts – to cover a breadth of support services, remanufacture components to like-new condition, and help to ensure financial savings through extending the life of critical assets.
The company provides a range of choices to provide the best value for specific problems, from offering new components to exchanging, repairing and rebuilding existing gear, all complemented with nearly a century of experience dealing with Cat machines.
According to Hastings Deering general manager for after-market and supply chain James Burns and executive manager for after-market solutions Simon Turnbull, the company’s approach is about more than selling parts or fixing machines. It is about creating partnerships.
“Anyone can sell a machine, anyone can rebuild a machine, but what we do is support the best coverage right across the lifecycle of the asset, from productivity and performance to maintenance and component life,” Turnbull said.
At the heart of Hastings Deering’s repair options is a philosophy of total asset support. That begins long before a rebuild and continues well beyond it.
With no two mines operating the same way, the company’s teams – from site-based performance specialists to component planners – work directly with customers to deliver solutions that fit their unique operating environments.
“We tried to have relationships right across a customer’s business,” Burns said. “That means understanding their operators, their maintenance teams, their fleet planners, even their finance departments, so we could align with their uptime goals, productivity goals and cost goals.”
Even with the best planning, mining is unpredictable. Equipment fails, conditions change and downtime happens. Hastings Deering recognises this – and prepares for it.
The company’s approach to repair is powered by data. By using connected asset data, scheduled oil sampling (SOS) analysis and condition monitoring, Hastings Deering can forecast maintenance needs long before a breakdown occurred.
“If a customer wants to run an engine to 30,000 hours, we are there tracking the asset’s health data along the way,” Turnbull said. “When the data tells us that in six months’ time that engine needs to come out, we started moving that replacement engine toward the site. When the time comes it’s there, ready to go.”
That kind of foresight translates into shorter downtimes and more reliable performance. It also positions Hastings Deering as one of the first to act when it comes to major maintenance events.
“Because we are so connected with the customer’s maintenance plans, we are often the first to know, and therefore the first to act,” Burns said.
The company maintains more than half a billion dollars of inventory across its network, supported by Cat’s global supply chain and partnerships with other Cat dealers such as Westrac and William Adams.
“If you aren’t there for a customer in the tough times, you might not be their first choice in the easy times,” Burns said.
“That was why we structured our workshops, inventory and people around both planned and reactive work.”
Part of being there when it matters is using the information at hand to anticipate needs and solve problems proactively. Mining generates immense volumes of machine and site data, but data alone isn’t always enough. Hastings Deering’s condition-monitoring team helps customers turn raw information into actionable insights.
In one recent case, the team analysed more than 8000 data inputs through artificial intelligence (AI), refining them into 12 clear recommendations for a mining customer, which meant they didn’t need to interpret thousands of lines of data.
“They just received a clear, actionable plan to improve performance and reliability,” Burns said.
For Hastings Deering, that type of partnership extends far beyond the workshop. It is an example of a long-term commitment built on data, expertise and trust to keep Australia’s mining fleets running stronger, longer and smarter.
This feature appears in the December issue of Australian Mining magazine.