Building the business

For nearly four decades, Australian owned and family-run business Flocon has been manufacturing a range of road maintenance equipment for the road rehabilitation and construction industry.

From humble beginnings, the company has grown to the point where its road maintenance equipment is sold around Australia and the world.

“We started about 40 years ago building trucks and units and hiring them out in Victoria. Now, we have business all across Australia,” says Peter Knight, Flocon’s Director.

Based out of its head office in Victoria, Flocon now has offices in Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania to support its range of road maintenance equipment.

Flocon continues to manufacture its extensive range at its Victorian premises. It includes the likes of road patching and repair units, aggregate spreaders, bitumen emulsion sealing units, cement or lime spreading units, bitumen emulsion storage tanks and road edge repair units and more.

Its road maintenance equipment is designed and built to handle products such as hotmix, coldmix or premix asphalts, aggregates and bitumen emulsions, cement lime, soils and most quarry products.

Over the years, Flocon has introduced products such as emulsion storage tanks and water tanks, but has continued to refurbish and upgrade its range of road maintenance units to cater to continual customer feedback.

The versatility of Flocon’s range is testament to its rigorous research and design process. The company’s first road maintenance unit was manufactured in 1975, and over the years, as the range of units grew, so too has the quality increased.

Mr. Knight says considerable field testing has been carried out using the manufacturer’s close relationship with customers, including federal, state and local government authorities.

Flocon have owned a fleet of hire units to facilitate the continuous development of its products, allowing customers to provide feedback on the equipment and, in turn, help to inform their future development.

“We get a lot of feedback from customers when we go out to see them. We use that information to help inform our ongoing research and design,” he says.

Since the company started, Mr. Knight says one of major focuses for the business was on building and fostering long relationships with customers.

As the manufacturer has grown, Mr. Knight says the company has kept its core family values close to heart.

“My father started the business. I now run it and my son, daughter and nephew are involved in the business, so there’s a succession plan in place to keep the business going.”