Page 28 - Australaasian Paint & Panel Jan-Feb 2022

Market intelligence
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PAINT&PANEL JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2022
Part of our role is to ensure that repairers are getting paid an appropriate amount for the work
FORTRESS APPEARED TO ME TO HAVE
sprung up out of nowhere. Joe Walsh was director of operations at Gemini and AMA for 10 years and obviously knows a thing or two about running a repair net- work. When he set out on his own at Sherdley Automotive, the first client he picked up was the hail company Action Smart Group (ASG).
“Hail is a volatile business so we made a plan to put some panel shops in the portfolio. I knew that Peter Butler from Swains was looking to retire and sell so ASG purchased that business in November 2020,” he said. “Another cli- ent I was dealing with was Howard McCracken from MSR who had five sites. On your own you can run one to five maximum and then you have to move to the next structure that will set you up for 20 sites. He needed his back office strengthened, ASG had the back office and in April this year the two companies merged and Fortress was created with an initial six sites. So it was two local, family owned, estab- lished businesses coming together,” he said. Walsh is now CEO of Fortress.
By December 2021 the group had 11 locations. The focus is on Queensland, although they did pick up a business in Newcastle, NSW. “If we get strategic
they are doing ”
“Part of our role is to ensure that re- pairers are getting paid an appropriate amount for the work that they are doing which allows the whole industry to be successful,” he said.
Cooper cited availability of techni- cians and also population movement as challenges. “A lot of people have moved out of metropolitan areas during the COVID pandemic. Then there’s vehicle technology challenges – ADAS, the in- creasing complexity of repairs and high- er parts replacement costs because of
the heightened technology. Car parc complexity is another challenge when it comes to speed of service.”
In the opportunities section, CEO Carl Bizon has been talking about the three Ps – partnerships, procurement, and people. “We’ll be developing our paral- lel parts importing to help with cost of repairs. Recycled parts are also an op- portunity – we’re the biggest dismantler in the nation," he said.
FORTRESS
SITES:11
EMPLOYEES: 270
TYPE OF WORK: Complex repairs ESTABLISHED: 2020
NO OF APPRENTICES: 32 FUNDING: Privately funded SITES IN: QLD,NSW
ABOVE: CEO Joe Walsh.
BELOW: Swains was a founding member of Fortress.