As another year draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the achievements of our customers.
Our good friends at Alsco have truly had a year to remember. In 2014 they celebrated Alsco’s 125 years in the textile services business. From humble beginnings in Lincoln Nebraska in 1889, Alsco has since served more customers in more countries for more years than any other image wear services supplier in the world. Check out Alsco’s 125th Anniversary Video. This achievement is a tribute to four generations of the Steiner family.
Alsco continues to expand and innovate. In August Allan Baird and I spent a week in Italy at the Alsco Merlino branch which is about a 40 minute drive from downtown Milan.
The laundry is state of the art with so many processing stages : arrival, sorting, washing, rinsing, hydro extraction, clean handling, tumble dry & transport, loading, control & repair, automatic sorting and automatic folding and empty hanger return. It was truly fascinating watching the machines that process thousands of items every day! Check out this video to see the laundry in operation.
We visited some of our New Zealand customers as well.
In July Callum Baird and I visited GMP Dairy, New Zealand’s first and largest pharmaceutical grade dairy manufacturing production facility. Our visit included a tour of the clean room production facility which is built to strict hygiene standards with extensive automation; the facility features the most advanced dairy processing, air filtration and testing systems in New Zealand.
Allan Baird and I attended the opening of Manuka Health’s new multi-million dollar production facility in Te Awamutu. Manuka Health is the largest purpose built honey processing and distribution centre in New Zealand.
Our customers have continued to grow and expand, with Abel this year. Nautech Electronics, who design, manufacture and install Electrical and Electronic Equipment into thousands of Emergency Service Vehicles, has expanded its use of Abel ERP Software in New Zealand into their Queensland operation.
We also welcomed many new customers to Abel this year including:
- Myriad Engineering, who has been providing engineering services since 1972, implemented Abel ERP Software into their Lower Hutt operation. Myriad Engineering provides high quality machined componentry for organizations that produce; world class racing yachts, LawnMaster lawnmowers and state of the art flag pole systems
- Hotter Engineering, a Taranaki-based designer and manufacturer of parallel rotary milking platforms for the global dairy industry, implemented Abel ERP Software this year. Hotter Engineering has installed over 500 high quality milking platforms in 30 countries.
- Reid and Twiname, who have been importing and distributing into the Motor Body Hardware and Industrial and Outdoor Textiles industries since 1923, implemented Abel ERP Software into their Auckland and Christchurch operations.
Our Distributor and Implementation Partner Abel Solutions has had a huge year with Abel ERP implementations on both sides of the Tasman, thank you David and the team, a truly remarkable effort for 2014.
And finally our Research & Development Center has continued to release more new features and functionality this year including:
- Significant enhancements to our Enterprise Management capabilities for those Abel customers running multiple Abel databases, and those that have a Head Office / Branch structure.
- Further enhancements to Manufacturing including Shop Orders, which can be used to better manage complex manufacturing processes. This functionality has enabled time saving for our milk powder processing customers.
- Several handy features for managing stock including “First Expiry – First Out” picking for better management of perishable stock.
- Enhancements to Abel’s Report Writer including a new pre-set automatic Report Builder.
- Enhancements to Fixed Assets internationalization.
- And, as always, we continue to make many small enhancements as requested by our customers.
To all our customers around the world, we wish you Compliments of the Season and we look forward to working with you again next year.
Jane and the Team at Abel