In preparing for annual December shut-downs, process plants and manufacturing facilities should carefully plan for conveyor belt maintenance and ensure that orders are placed timeously to ensure stock availability.

Local conveyor belt manufacturer, Vision Conveying, is more than doubling its stock holding capacity in order to cope with the annual demand for belting and conveyor components. Suppliers usually experience unprecedented demand for stock during this period and shortages are known to either drive prices sky-high, or lead to delays in scheduled maintenance of companies’ conveyors. Considering the critical role that conveyors play in typical production and process facilities the effects can be devastating.

Colin Fairweather from the conveyor belt manufacturer says that especially in the express freight and transport industry, December usually marks the end of an extremely busy period and shut-downs are made to coincide with the holidays. Equipment that has been run hard throughout the year is often in desperate need of maintenance and many businesses are unfortunately forced to scramble for stock of belting in order to complete maintenance tasks.