Courier Mail article: A safer way to lift off

Brisbane company Verton is working to make crane operations safer, quicker and cheaper with its world-first technology that allows crane loads to be moved with people well out of the way. Less than a year after starting commercial manufacturing, the company has already gone international and closed deals to supply the remote load-management technology to seven global construction companies and is due to open an office in the Dutch city of Rotterdam in July.

According to Verton managing director Trevor Bourne the success in the European market is also a win for jobs back home - with all manufacturing of the technology to be done in Queensland. “Our company has grown from three(staff) to 12 just in the last six months, and we will continue to employ people as we grow,” Bourne says. “We outsource all manufacturing to Queensland companies, so there will be additional employment through those companies who are manufacturing our equipment for us.”

Development on the technology started in 2014, when the company’s founder Stan Thompson came up with the idea to remove taglines - the ropes that manage crane’s load - from crane operations. The company started commercialising the technology in August last year and partnered with it's first client, Brisbane-based crane hire company Universal Cranes. Bourne says the technology is revolutionising the construction industry, and big business and government need to start adopting it.

“We’re going to start seeing more and more of this. More robotics, smarter equipment, more integrated operations,” he says. “It is the way of the future, there’s no question.” He says a recent $1 million State Government grant will help accelerate Verton’s product commercialisation.

Article by - Sarah Matthews
Article printed in the Small Business section of the Courier Mail 26 April 2019