History and Organizations of Australian Fencing Industry

Basically, Australian fences can be divided into three types: wire mesh fence, temporary fence and portable fence. Today, we will focus on wire mesh fence. At first, some Australian steel corporations dominate the materials of making wire mesh fences. They set up some affiliated companies that specialized in pipe, wire, casting and other easily produced hot-rolled steel products. Years later, companies engaged in installing fences are successively founded. The steel companies are to consume their own production of steel. Thus, almost every product has to be processed more than required. Since they increase the cost of materials, stick to old conventions and has poor service, there is no price advantage in market. Under these circumstances, independent installation companies began to appear. These companies are relatively small, of fewer orders and unable to directly purchase products from the manufacturers. Therefore, they have to turn to those larger fence installation companies affiliating with steel companies. Actually, these new-founded installation companies are competing with manufacturers for installation business.

Then another type of company comes out, which are also independent from iron and steel production companies. They simply aim to sell fence rather than promoting the steel. Meanwhile, they fill gap existing in the fence market. They actively respond to what customer needs and improve the products in an appropriate way without a waste of steel. At the same time, those companies affiliating with steel companies begin to decline. With the success of these new companies, some experts realize that they should set up an organization to guarantee their competitiveness with those informed steel companies.

In 1960, these companies joint together to establish a trade association, the Australian Metal Protection Organization. In process of time, the organization, cooperating with Australian Society for Testing and Materials and other organizations, has set the standard of qualified products in fence industries. F-14, a branch of Australian Society for Testing and Materials, is specialized in improving and setting new fence standards.

Recently, F-14 is making standards for metal welded wire mesh. The steps of developing a new fence standard are as follows:

F-14 requires every member to input new ideas for new fences, including wire diameter, horizontal and vertical wire spacing, mesh height and width and its main use (for example: industrial, civil, commercial, security, etc.). F-14 will take careful thought about every idea got from each member and write out an initial standard which will be discussed at meetings. After discussions, they will make a few improvements and hand out to every member.

If any member wants to add or modify the standard, he can make an offer to the branch in written form. Meetings will be held to discuss about these disagreements. Then formal written standard will be settled by a show of hands of all members. After the vote, Australian Association of wire mesh fence will code the standard in the file. The whole process will last 18-30 weeks.

Meanwhile, the Australian Metal Protection Organization actively cooperates with Consumer Product Safety Commission and makes standards for security products like swimming pool block, electric gate, barbed wire products.

The Australian Metal Protection Organization support architects, engineers, governments and other customers a lot of information and technologies. They have announced metal fence standards, which are widely used by governments and many companies.

The Australian Metal Protection Organization has also made a UPC code (Universal Product Code) for fence industry. The Association of the United States has made a great many contributions to Australian fence industry and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

In 1962, two years after the establishment of the Australian Metal Protection Organization, some fencing installers set up another association - the Australian Fence Industry Association. At first, the scale of this organization is very small and has only 22 members in its first year. However, ten years later, the association has own 577 members. Since 1990, this group changes its name into Australian Fence Association, which has 2400 members.

The association focuses on training its members. It establishes training schools for installing fences, issues authorized fence installer certificate, and provides trainings for business administration, sales,
personnel management and so on.

Moreover, the group sponsors or co-organizes some national or regional exhibition every year. A number of manufacturers may grasp this opportunity to exhibit their products. No less than 221 companies will take part in the exhibition every time. So far, the exhibition has witnessed 5883 members’ presence at total.

Though the establishment of the two associations has highlighted Australian fence industry, there is one missing part in the whole market. A lot of installation companies are unable to directly purchase fence products from manufacturers, so they have to buy from the nearest installation companies at a larger scale, which means that they have to compete with their suppliers and buy at a much higher price.

In late 1960, another type of company crammed into the Australian fence market. These companies mainly purchase fence products from manufacturers and then sell to fence installation companies. What they do is not to install fences, but to buy and then sell. These companies develops very quickly as they could provide those small installation companies with all kinds of products at reasonable price. These are what we call fence sale companies or fence wholesale companies. Sometimes they also produce a certain amount of products.

Since sales volume of these sale companies has outdistanced those big installation companies, these sale companies could sell products at a lower price. Thus, they also have a richer resource of products. These companies begin to import fence products from foreign countries, from Japan followed by South Korea, India, Taiwan, Mexico, and then from China. There are a great many of other countries, but these countries that have mentioned above are the major importing countries of Australian fence.

These vendors play an active role in the Australian Metal Protection Organization and the Australian Fence Association. They also lend tremendous support for new standards and the new independent vendors.

In late 1980, the development and alliance of these regional vendors has made some independent big companies that are able to provide fence products for the whole Australia. This is the history and organizations of Australian fence industry.