Rainwater Tanks Bring Business Flooding In

A rapid rise in rainwater tank sales has allowed a New South Wales Central Coast company to reinvent its business in recent years.

Family owned Coast and Country Water Tanks started as a roofing company more than 15 years ago, but more than doubled sales when it moved into rainwater tanks.

"We introduced rainwater tanks four years ago, and 30 per cent of our business was in rainwater tanks and the rest was in roofing after our first year," says owner Maurice Ngatoko.

"Now rainwater tanks account for at least 70 per cent of our business.

"Half our rainwater tanks are bought by the public, the other half by project builders like AV Jennings, McDonald Jones, Beechwood and Eagle Homes."

Each month the company sells an average of 130 round and slim line rainwater tanks made from BlueScope Steel products. The tanks can hold up to 23,000 litres of water.

"We roll, assemble and seal our rainwater tanks at our Wyong headquarters on the Central Coast," Maurice says. "We use AQUAPLATE® steel for the tank walls and COLORBOND® steel for the roof."

Specifically designed for use in tanks, AQUAPLATE® steel is easy to maintain, corrosion resistant and coated with a food grade polymer for clean tasting water. It comes in a galvanised finish or in one of three prepainted colours.

Coast and Country Water Tanks is also a distributor for Western Australian based Heritage Tanks®, a company that makes tanks with capacities of up to 575,000 litres. The New South Wales company sells about four of these tanks a month to rural and farming customers.

"The largest tanks are 14.5 metres in diameter and 5.4 metres high," Maurice says. "They come in kit form so our two installers can put them together in two days."

Coast and Country Water Tanks is a member of the STEEL BY™ Brand Partnership Program, and uses the reputation of the BlueScope Steel brand to leverage its own products.

"We've been using COLORBOND® steel for years, for roofing and rainwater products, and AQUAPLATE® steel for our rainwater tanks, and find the products' quality and reliability unbeatable," Maurice says.

"Using BlueScope Steel products means we can offer customers a 20 year warranty on the AQUAPLATE® steel used in our tanks."

Maurice attributes a large part of Coast and Country Water Tanks success to its highly committed and skilled team of workers.

"We currently employ eight people and service an area of NSW bounded by Sydney in the south, Port Macquarie in the north and Scone in the west," he says.

The company plans to open a second office near Newcastle in early 2007, and is also investigating a possible move into the Queensland market.

For more information contact:
Maurice Ngatoko
Coast and Country Water Tanks
Phone: 1800 826 570
www.coastandcountrywatertanks.com.au

Heritage Tanks is a registered trademark of Heritage Tanks.