South Australian-based suspension and motion technology manufacturer, Supashock has announced that it will establish a US office in California. The announcement builds upon existing contracts to supply active suspension systems to a US autonomous vehicle manufacturer.
“We’ve been exporting to the US for a little while now so it just made sense with our partner Rheinmetall to establish an office over there,” said founder and managing director, Oscar Fiorinotto, speaking to Manufacturers’ Monthly.
Supashock supplies to the defence, civil automotive and logistics handling markets in Australia, and manufacturers in Holden Hill, north-east of Adelaide.
“Our plan is obviously to work within both the defence and automotive groups and continue our push into local manufacturing, but most of the designs will come from Adelaide and then be sold into the US through our US office,” said Fiorinotto.
The company hopes to take advantage of the larger market for automotive parts in the United States, with Fiorinotto estimating that the markets they could supply to totalling $400 billion in automotive and $740 billion in defence. The size of these markets will not, however, distract Supashock from its Australian base.
“For us it’s critical that we have operations in the US and those operations are going to extend from design to manufacturing to quality control and slowly build up,” said Fiorinotto. “But it’ll be purely off the back of what we’ve done in Australia.”
Supashock also sees a future for its components in Europe and South East Asia, where it already has established a presence. As in the case of its US expansion, these global thrust will be backed up by the design and engineering that occurs in Australia.
“It’s going to be a way for us to potentially build some of the more complex componentry in Australia and send them around the world,” said Fiorinotto. “Some of the major OEMs will want to manufacture over there, but we’re happy to work within our current manufacturing program here because it’s very difficult to look at manufacturing complex systems without having the time to set it up.”