CRH, one of the nation’s largest aggregate producers, came to an agreement establishing Conn-Weld Industries as its preferred screening equipment supplier in North America.
Marty Pinter, who serves CRH as group global category manager for production equipment, says his company partnered with Conn-Weld in such a fashion because it’s actively seeking out supply partners and not merely vendors.
“What I see with suppliers as a whole is some rely on yesterday’s wins,” says Pinter, whose career at CRH spans more than 25 years. “They’re slow to change with the market. As a producer, we need to change with the market. The market is making us change. If suppliers don’t change with us, there tends to be a friction because they’re not keeping up with our needs – because we have to deliver to the end user.”
Pinter expects CRH and Conn-Weld to both benefit from the agreement.
“The strategic relationship really gets into the underlings of what we’re going to be doing as a company and how Conn-Weld can help us in achieving our goals at CRH – and vice versa,” Pinter says. “It’s about us challenging Conn-Weld to be innovative and a market leader, and to be able to give them the ability to improve products and really take them to the next level.”
Similarly, Conn-Weld president Marvin Woodie expects both companies to push each other through the partnership.
“We want them to make piles of rock that are correct, and we want to make machines that drive those piles of rock,” Woodie says. “We don’t just want to look at price and deliveries, which are strategically important. But if we can find something they need – and they can come to us and be innovative with us with whatever that is in screening – we’ll apply that. I think that’s a great partnership.”
Partnership tenets
According to Pinter, CRH’s relationship with Conn-Weld formed about seven years ago with one or two screens. As a manufacturer, Conn-Weld wasn’t new to screening at that time. The company was, however, newer to aggregates.
“They’ve had a proven track record on the mining side and precious metals,” Pinter says. “They’ve really parlayed that to the workings of the aggregates side. They may be a new name in this business, but they’re not a new name globally.”
Over the last several years, Pinter says CRH experienced several of Conn-Weld’s strengths firsthand.
“We felt that the design that goes into the screens, the leadership of the company, and just the trajectory that they’re on [adds up to] somebody we want to grow with,” he says.
For CRH, service is another tenet of a fruitful partnership with suppliers. As Woodie describes, exceptional service is something Conn-Weld aims to provide.
“One of the things we concentrate on is our people,” Woodie says. “It’s strategically important to know how to work on our machines. We’ve talked about going to all the [CRH] operations and doing service training or things like that that are ancillary to buying equipment. That puts them and us in a stronger position.”
Because of CRH’s size and that the company has so many operations, carrying out a preferred supplier agreement like this one is no simple task. Through the agreement, however, Pinter sees the potential for growth at every CRH company.
“We want to look at some of our new greenfield sites that will be coming up and some of our old sites where the technology is old – as well as our other preferred vendors across the United States – and work together as one team to help innovate solutions,” Pinter says.
