OUR HISTORY

JEFF HORT ENGINEERING WAS INCORPORATED IN MARCH 1995

The Business was established by Jeff and Rae Hort in Kenna Street Orange, New South Wales. With the aim of providing an engineering support service firstly into the rural/ quarrying industry and secondly into the then fledgling mining industry given that the proposed Cadia Mine was approved by government.

In 1998, JME Engineering was formed in Wollongong under a 50-50 partnership with Woods Tipper Hire.

JME invested in a new workshop facility in 2004 and 6-years later purchased additional land at the rear of this facility to enhance future expansion of the business. Truck mounted tyre handling cranes, modification works to road haulage vehicles, abrasive blasting, industrial painting and spare part storage facilities developed throughout 2013/14 are now a feature of the business.

In 2000, Jeff Hort Engineering purchased 8-acres of industrial land at Clergate Road in Orange with the aim of eventually relocating the three different Orange locations of the business to Clergate Road.

June 2001, Jeff Hort Engineering acquired an Orange based engineering company Joma, that had been in the engineering business for over 40 years. The acquisition improved the company’s tooling and provided a lease of an existing workshop with improved facilities.

During the first half of 2003, a purpose-built factory was constructed on the company’s Clergate Road Orange land to manufacture refrigerator heat exchanges, skin condenser coils, dew point tubes and miscellaneous tubes for the white goods manufacturer Electrolux Home Products. Some infrastructure was installed to accommodate future expansion of facilities on the land. Full production of the manufacturing facility was achieved by the end of February 2004.

With the change in the global mark from September 2005 through to June 2006, 75% of the products were transferred overseas to China by Electrolux. The remaining 25% of production was transferred in October 2007. This facility was revamped to carry out structural steel fabrication and then in 2010 wear resistant materials linings was transferred from Kenna Street to this facility to take advantage of the heated floor. Structural steel transferred to the Edward street workshop and the Kenna Street workshop was then disbanded.

May 2005, the company started to move towards CNC technology with the purchase of a plasma/Oxy acetylene plate cutting machine that we commissioned at the Edward St workshop in Orange to give us a competitive edge as well as providing a quality product.

In 2006, land was purchased in the West Wyalong industrial estate and a workshop was constructed to house a new division of Jeff Hort Engineering. This division was set up to service the Barrick Gold Mine at Lake Cowal. The facility was commissioned in April 2006.

May 2006, and after the success of the CNC plasma/oxy acetylene a new 4 Axis CNC vertical milling machine was commissioned at the Edward Street workshop again to give us a competitive edge and to provide a quality product. This was shortly followed with the purchase of two CNC machining centres.

Abrasive blasting and industrial painting became a feature of the business through the acquisition of abrasive blasting and other equipment from an Orange engineering company Leewood Welding in March 2007 that had made the decision to shut down their operation.

December 2010, the company acquired the plant and equipment of a structural steel business in Dubbo NSW Webb Welding. The purchase of the facility was finalised in February 2012. The Dubbo division provides engineering services into the north western region of NSW and plays a supportive role to the other divisions of Jeff Hort Engineering.

May 2011, a new purpose designed and built industrial painting booth was installed and commissioned at the Orange Clergate Road facility.

November 2013, Jeff Hort Engineering through acquisition purchased the tools, plant and equipment from an existing quarry maintenance company Morway Engineering & Consulting that operated out of Dubbo and Newcastle. This purchase gave the Dubbo division on-site line boring and portable machining capability as a further diversification to the company’s “one stop shop” capability.

February 2014, the Orange Clergate Road development gave Jeff Hort Engineering (for the first time) steel fabrication, wear resistant linings, abrasive blasting and industrial protective coating all operating out of the one facility. The facility includes a purpose-built communication centre that ties in the other three divisions of Jeff Hort Engineering. West Wyalong, Dubbo and Mudgee.

On the 1st July 2014, Jeff Hort Engineering Pty Ltd as a business entity was rebadged to become Hort Enterprises Pty Ltd. This step reflects the maturity, the ownership and stewardship of the business.

July 2014, Hort Enterprises successfully undertook a merged takeover of a fabrication workshop Proweld located in Mudgee NSW. The acquisition included the purchase of the businesses tooling, vehicles, plant and equipment. This merger was a strategic decision to open up opportunities for Hort Enterprises into the coal industry.

Early 2015 Hort Enterprises formed a partnership with a Civil and Construction company AWICC to form a company called AWCON. In May 2016 Hort Enterprises sold its share to AWICC.

May 2015, Hort Enterprises 50% share of JME was sold and the funds from the sale reinvested back into Hort Enterprises.

February 2016, Hort Enterprises opened a trial branch in Cobar NSW. Already doing quite a bit of work in this area through our Dubbo branch made the justification of taking this step easy.

September 2017 Hort Enterprises went into a 70:30 partnership with Sara Engineering to form Hort Constructions. This allowed the company to work in both the fixed plant maintenance market as well as the construction market, utilising two separate pools of labour and to assist with opening up new markets for the company’s fabrication manufacturing capabilities.

December 2019 a new office block was opened at the Orange Clergate Rd facility to house the growing Mechanical Engineering, Design Drafting and Estimating teams.

February 2020 the company’s Engineering & Drafting team increased its offering to its clients by way of 3D scanning capabilities.

March 2020 a restructure of the Mudgee branch was carried out to align ourselves with the company direction for this branch. A change in the management team allowed for a new management team to be put in place that had the right qualifications to move the branch forward in line with the strategic plan.

March 2020 Australia was no longer sitting on the side lines of the COVID – 19 pandemic that was spreading at a great rate across the globe. We found ourselves in uncharted waters with government shutting down all non-essential businesses, policing social distancing, enforcing self-isolation and shutting the borders to the states and territories to slow the spread of this virus.

Hort Enterprises was lucky enough to be categorised in the essential services business sector which allowed us to continue operating for our client base in NSW. With the border closures we were left in a position where we were not able to cross interstate to carry out works for the Prominent Hill Mine in South Australia, the Groote Eylandt Mine in the Northern Territory or the Cannington Mine in Queensland which were originally scheduled for the months of May and June 2020.

April 2020 the Company successfully achieved its Environmental accreditation to go with its WHS and Quality ISO accreditations.

August of 2021 Jeffery Charles Hort one of the founding owners passed away in Orange NSW. His funeral due to Covid could only be attended by his immediate family and the rest were able to join via a video link. A guard of honour made up of current and passed employees as well as friends and other family not in lockdown areas, were able to be set up at the head office facility on Clergate Road Orange. He was laid to rest at the Orange cemetery. His legacy and beliefs continue to live on within the business he so loved and was so proud of.

The remainder of 2021 continued with State Borders opening one week and closing again the following week. Western Australia being the exception with their borders remaining closed for the entire duration of 2021. The financial support from Government through the job keeper scheme went a long way to keeping business afloat during this time.

With the vaccination rates reaching 85 to 90% level for double vaccination at the start of 2022 we finally started to see some of the state’s borders remain open to each other which allowed companies like Horts to start the process of trying to regain works that clients were forced to get done by other companies due to Horts not being able to attend.