| Client | Plastic pallet washing facility |
| Industry | Supply Chain & Logistics |
| Facility Location | Macquarie Park, New South Wales |
| Service | Fractional Maintenance, 24/7 Breakdown Response |
| Team Deployed | 3 Maintenance Electricians + 1 Mechanical Fitter |
| Operating Environment | 24/7 continuous production |
| Value of Downtime | ~$17,000 per hour |
| Outcome | Downtime decreased significantly; relationship extended to a new site |
Our Australian pallet facility client is one of the country’s largest supply chain providers, supplying high-quality pallets and containers that support the construction, handling, and transport industries. Its plastic pallet washing facility plays a critical role in the wider network — a single point where a stoppage doesn’t just idle one site, it ripples across every trading partner downstream.
The facility runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, with minimum three extra production shifts most weekends. At that pace, there is no “convenient” time for a breakdown — every hour of unplanned downtime removes pallets and containers from a live supply chain, and every hour carries a direct cost to the business of approximately $17,000.
They needed more than a reactive call-out contractor. They needed a maintenance partner who could:
MEX Engineering Group embedded a dedicated site team of three maintenance electricians and one mechanical fitter, structured around fractional maintenance principles rather than one-off service calls:
24-hour operational assistance. The team provides round-the-clock coverage plus overtime weekend shifts, aligned to the facility’s real production roster rather than standard business hours.
Preventative maintenance ownership. Instead of waiting for equipment to fail, the team runs scheduled asset care to catch component wear before it causes a line stop — the same root-cause approach MEX Engineering Group applies across its fractional maintenance contracts.
End-to-end trade coordination. MEX Engineering Group organises all necessary trades, sources parts, and schedules repairs directly — removing that coordination burden from their internal team entirely.
Institutional memory. By keeping the same technicians embedded on-site long-term rather than rotating contractors through, the team has developed detailed knowledge of the plant’s specific equipment history, which shortens diagnosis time when something does go wrong.
Since MEX Engineering Group took control of site maintenance, downtime at the plastic pallet washing facility has decreased significantly. At an estimated $17,000 in lost value per hour, even modest reductions in stoppage time translate into considerable, measurable savings across their entire operation.
The relationship has grown from supporting client’s established sites in Lidcombe, Rosehill, and Wetherill Park, to embedding dedicated technical teams inside their current facilities at Kemps Creek, Erskine Park, and Eastern Creek. These modern facilities sit directly within the rapidly expanding industrial growth corridor surrounding the new Western Sydney International Airport at Badgerys Creek.
With industrial footprint across Western Sydney expanding rapidly over the coming years, this growth corridor is becoming Australia’s premier hub for automated logistics, high-speed packaging, and advanced manufacturing. By providing embedded maintenance support across both legacy plant environments and new facilities, MEX Engineering Group delivers vital reliability continuity, ensuring established industrial precincts remain fully operational while new sites ramp up to maximum throughput capacity.
Protect your uptime today
Any downtime saved at this facility is a considerable saving across the operation of the business.”
Site Operations
Unplanned downtime is rarely just a maintenance issue — it’s a business continuity issue. Our client’s experience reflects a pattern common across high-speed, 24/7 manufacturing and logistics sites in Australia: reactive, break-fix contracting leaves facilities exposed, while embedded fractional maintenance teams close the gap between “found a fault” and “fixed the fault” — because the people fixing it already know the plant.
This case study is one example of the fractional maintenance and 24/7 breakdown response capability MEX Engineering Group provides to manufacturers across FMCG, food and beverage, brewing, recycling, and high-speed packaging.
Related services:
If unplanned stoppages are eating into your production schedule, an embedded fractional maintenance team could be the difference between a reactive scramble and a controlled response.
MEX Engineering Group provides embedded site teams and engineering services to some of the country’s largest production facilities. We maintain critical infrastructure for industry leaders across FMCG, food and beverage, and high-speed packaging, including Tooheys, CHEP, Ullrich Aluminium, Goodman Fielder, and BlueScope Steel.