Between Hook and Load, Rigging

Hoisting Equipment Specialists celebrates 40 years

Hoisting Equipment Specialists (HES) is quickly proving to be one of the pre-eminent lifting and rigging companies in Australia with a diverse range of products for any challenge.

Jason Francis is the CEO of HES and explains how the company came to be where it is today and what has helped it succeed.

“The company was started in 1982 by Greg Jones and we have always maintained a focus on lifting, lashing, rigging, materials handling and height safety equipment and applications.

“I started in the industry back in 2002 at HES but when I relocated to Queensland, I had to unfortunately depart the company, I remained in the industry working for a family business in the lifting sector and returned to HES back in 2017.

“I returned in 2017 as I needed a challenge and wanted to help grow something and HES saw an opportunity to continue its growth in Queensland, so I became a partner in 2019 and took over as CEO in 2020 just before covid took off.

HES now has two branches in both Sydney and Brisbane and are continuing to grow despite the challenges of covid. Jason and the team are continuing to search for ways to better serve the lifting sector including increasing its overhead crane division on a larger scale.

The company has a range of partners and suppliers across the country including in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria with an important cornerstone of the business the OzBlok range of products as Jason explains.

“We import our range of OzBlok products, it’s a high-quality product that we sell to distributors, wholesalers and directly to the market,” Jason said.

The OzBlok range includes chain blocks, lever hoists, electric chain hoists, clamps and winches. The range starts from 250-kilogram capacity all the way through to the 50 tonne. 

“For us it is important to have a good relationship with our suppliers, it means we can approach them for a greater understanding of our equipment and to ensure we are able to maintain short lead times for delivery,” Jason said.

Jason Francis is growing HES to a one stop shop for lifting equipment.

“We have also been working hard at bringing the Nagaki wire rope products from Japan into Australia. It has been extremely popular across a range of sectors including the power industry, energy and those in netting, we’re one of only two distributors here in Australia.

Jason explains how HES has set itself up to serve the lifting market and what it may look like moving forward.

“We try and set ourselves up as a one stop shop. We work a little bit differently to some other companies. We align ourselves closely with businesses that can allow us to service our clients either as a third party or in house.

“We have got engineers that work with us, we’ve got partners working in servicing that do other parts of height safety equipment that we tie in with. If we can’t deliver that service internally, we’ll then steer the customers to where they need to go, which some companies don’t like to do,” Jason said.

Safety is the cornerstone of everything HES does in the industry, with a range of height safety equipment including harnesses, lanyards and fall arrestors offered. These come from recognised companies including Spanset, 3M, Austlift and Honeywell.

“As a company we will look to continue moving forward and growing what we can offer to the industry, we have numerous exciting announcements for the near future,” Jason said. 

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