SA coil maker reels in ‘detectorists’ from Italy to Africa
On the surface, SA-based COILTEK looks like a metal detector component maker. But behind the scenes, the company is making all kinds of inroads with its advanced manufacturing expertise.
Out of a 500 sqm warehouse in Salisbury South, Coiltek is making components for major defence and mining companies that are choosing local, trusted suppliers for intricate parts.
But most of Coiltek’s customers would know the business as a maker of metal detector coils – the part of the metal detector that picks up signals for detectorists.
This two-stream business model has enabled Coiltek to scale from a humble electronics manufacturer to a mid-size SA player in the advanced manufacturing space.
Founded in 1996, Coiltek was the maker of original copper coils for Minelab – another South Australian success story that’s now owned by SA tech giant Codan.
In 2007, long-term employee Trevor Ferraresso and his wife Natalie Michaels bought the business and transformed it into Coiltek.
While Coiltek still makes components for metal detectors – primarily hobby detectorists worldwide from the Czechia to Italy and even in Africa – it has another growing side to its business.
You might like
“We’re really good at winding copper”, said Ferraresso, who leads a 13-strong team.
“About ten years ago we started looking at that diversity, and in the last three to five years we’ve started to focus on a couple of industries that we work with for contract manufacturing work and bespoke windings.
“We make little transformers, inductors and things for businesses.”
This includes clients like global giant Thermo Fisher Scientific, Hexagon Mining and recently defence companies.
Coiltek is on the Boeing Australia Capability Uplift Program, an initiative designed to help Australian companies become ready for growing defence industry opportunities.
“Defence and space is really starting to look at us because all of that needs some form of wire component and assembly, in their radars, their sensing equipment, power systems,” he said.
Stay informed, daily
“We’ve been really able to hone our skills and what we do here.”
And the company’s size was an advantage in the local supply chain, Ferraresso said.
“Mining, defence, medical… they need really high-quality, bespoke windings, but maybe not in the tens of thousands. They need them more in the hundreds and maybe thousands,” he said.
“That way, they don’t have to go offshore and get minimum quantities of a huge amount. They can come to a company like us and we can make one to ten, right up to 5000 if they need it.”
Ferraresso said that while initial opportunities for the incoming AUKUS nuclear submarine project would not be open to Coiltek, he hoped the company could fit in at the later stages of the project’s life.
“Where we come in is more for the radar systems and the power systems,” he said.
“When the electronic side of things starts to really kick into gear, there is plenty of potential. We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire.”
Coiltek was also recently a recipient of a state government grant being used to develop a one-of-a-kind process to automate the company’s gluing process in collaboration with Flinders University.
This process usually generates fumes hazardous to workers, and the robot takes away that risk.
“Now it’s set up in our factory here,” Ferraresso said.
“The fact that small companies can work with unis, get these grants and implement these ideas to ensure that we can have that efficiency and advanced manufacturing is really fantastic.”
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
