That journey has now earned Moss Vale-based Oxley Frame & Truss the title of Best Frame & Truss Operation at the recent NSW Timber & Hardware Awards.
For owners Daryl Prothero and his wife Paige, it is recognition of a business they have spent the past 11 years building, evolving and, increasingly, automating.
When the couple bought Oxley Frame & Truss, the business had already been operating for around 30 years. The previous owners were retiring, giving Daryl and Paige the opportunity to take over a well-established operation and put their own stamp on it.
For Daryl, frame and truss was hardly unfamiliar territory. A former carpenter, he had spent his teenage years working in his father’s frame and truss business in Victoria.
Finding a better way
Over the past three to five years, Oxley has made a major push towards automation.
“We’ve been looking at a lot of automation and trying to reduce the physical labour load and build a better, more efficient product,” Daryl says.
The business has invested in a Randek AutoEye truss system, automated sawing and feed systems, and robotic nail plating.
The result is a production process designed to be faster, more accurate and easier on the team, with minimal manual handling of timber.
“We don’t actually touch our product, the timber and materials, until it gets to the Randek to produce the trusses,” Daryl says.
A diverse customer base
Oxley Frame & Truss also services a remarkably broad market, from owner-builders and granny flats and extensions through to major builders.
“We don’t really have a set customer base,” Daryl says.
That diversity helps keep the business busy and means it isn’t dependent on one particular market.
“It keeps us busy… because we don’t rely on a certain market.”
Looking ahead
The award may recognise where Oxley Frame & Truss is today, but Daryl is already looking at what comes next.
The business is exploring further automation, modular building, cassette floors and roofs, and other modern methods of construction that could streamline building on site.
For Daryl, it is also about responding to the realities facing the industry.
“Australia at the moment’s in a pretty tough place. Labour’s so expensive; it’s hard to get labour.”
His view is simple: the industry has to keep finding ways to work smarter.
“To keep an industry going, we’re going to look at ways that we can be more efficient, more effective.”
For Oxley Frame & Truss, that mindset has helped transform an established local business into a 70-person operation — and the NSW award recognises a business that continues to set its sights higher.