Dealing and Engineering, a Perfect Match

The newly appointed Develon dealership for South Wales, family-based business G.O.S Plant Services Ltd, are located high up in the famous world heritage town of Blaenavon, Gwent, South Wales, an area which is well known for its mining and industrial engineering history, and as I was about to discover, there is a lot more to this company than meets the eye.

The current co-owners Wayne and Neil Gregory’s father William (Bill) Gregory moved to Blaenavon in his younger years, to set up his engineering business in 1966, which he named G.O.S Engineering, which apparently stood for “Go or Stop” which ran traditionally for 30 years, supporting local steel works, and mining operations and essentially built the business on the strength of that.

At the age of 70 William decided it was time to retire, and it was at that point that Wayne decided he didn’t want the business to end, so he left his job at the big Sony television factory in Pencoed, where he was a graduate engineer at the facility where they were manufacturing an incredible 15,000 televisions a day, to carry on the engineering legacy started by his father.

This might have seemed like a massive career change for Wayne, but the reality was that since the age of ten he had been involved in cutting, drilling, sawing and welding, all the type of things youngsters can’t do anymore due to health & safety regulations, so he had kind of grown up around it all, often spending the summer months delivering work at the facility.

Wayne came back into the business in 1995, and he takes up the story, “So I came back to find it had been run down a bit to what it was, but we quickly built it back up on the strength of the heritage that father had created in 30 years, and with the workload we quite rapidly grew the ranks to be employing around 30-40 local people.

My brother then joined us, following a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry, and to be fair he’s a much better marketing manager than me, and we have driven the business on together ever since. In 2008 we had the opportunity to takeover Usk based Philmor Rail who were a manufacturing business in road-rail vehicles who had unfortunately got into a bit of trouble financially and we were lucky enough to be able to take on the product.

We have been very lucky to secure the services of some good people that came with that business, Carl Jones for instance, our rail director, who is absolutely fantastic, very knowledgeable and a great asset to our business. The Philmor product itself was very good, but they just didn’t have the engineering capability to back it up, so now we have everything here in-house”.

The company has continued to evolve over the last 20 years, in the earlier days they were undertaking rail and subcontract fabrication work, for vessels and precision machining, but quite quickly the rail work took all their capacity, and as other fabrication work was in decline it was a natural progression.

With Carl driving the rail side of things, they have been solely focused on supporting the rail industry for some 15 years now.

Wayne Gregory added, “We also have Adam Davies who joined us as a Senior Project Manager, and he’s managing some very big projects for us, in the Channel Tunnel and other big rail jobs. We have built these working relationships on traditional skills, knowledge, support, and being very fair with our customers, and if there’s ever a problem, we are always there to solve it”.

Wayne’s son Will Gregory has also joined the company, with a big focus on marketing and social media, making it a true 3^rd generation family business.

Walking around the massive engineering works was a complete eye opener, when the machines arrive, which are mostly Develon DX170W models, which starts life as a 17-tonne machine, and ends up as a 32-tonne heavy lift machine. They are initially stripped right back and re-designed by the in-house design team and re-engineered to meet the specific railway specification. They also convert a number of other Develon machines namely the DX140LCR and the “Superbug” which is based on the DX235LCR which ends up tipping the scales at 34-tonnes and is the biggest capacity machine on the railways today.

Even the rail bogie wheels are machined in house which is quite the spectacle to witness in action. In addition to the excavator conversion work, the company also manufacture around 12 rail trailers per month which are exported to the German market as they hold compliance certification for the German railways. They also export a lot of machines and associated equipment internationally, to places such as Australia, Canada, and the Nordic regions.

One of their most popular products sold to the Australian market is a DX170W-5 which utilises friction drive rail gear with rail wheel braking. A G.O.S built gen-set is mounted on the rear to provide power for welding using flash-butt welding technology.

G.O.S have worked closely with Australian business Progress Rail over the last few years to develop the market leading ‘All-Terrain Mobile Welders’ (ATMW). These high-value machines are primarily used in the north west heavy mining territories.

Photo: Courtesy of G.O.S Plant Services Ltd.

When the finished products come out of the workshops, they are then thoroughly tested on their own brake test rail track, and they have a tilting turntable for testing stability and calibration, its impressive stuff for sure. They also design and manufacture front end equipment, such as long reach booms and dippers, and even telescopic lifting booms for mounting on the road rail excavators.

DEVELON DEALERSHIP

G.O.S Plant Services Ltd are replacing the previous regional dealer who had covered the area for 30 years.

Having had a long history of converting Develon and formerly Doosan machines over the years, they had naturally built up a good working relationship with the Korean manufacturer’s UK division. So back in October last year they were approached by Carl Deans, Develon Europe’s, District Manager for the UK South & Ireland, about the possibility of becoming a dealer, and following a few informative meetings by the end of October it was a done deal and they officially started trading as a dealer on January 1^st 2026.

Talking about the move Wayne said, “We’ve had fantastic support from them. A lot of the key people are all Welsh, which always helps. It’s been a bit of a slow start as we expected, the weather we have all been suffering hasn’t helped, but the service and spares have been very good though, we have everything in place with our new service vans in place, and another one coming in due course and stock machines in the yard so its all systems go”.

The dealership covers all of South Wales from Chepstow right down to Haverfordwest and Fishguard, up north into Powys, and most recently Herefordshire has been added to the already significant coverage area, giving them a substantial amount of work within a 30-mile radius of the depot, and is set to be a good fit partnering with the other side of the business going forward.

Wayne see’s the mini excavator models as being the most popular sellers initially, with the larger crawler excavators and wheeled loaders following on from that, with talks already going on with some large businesses locally that are soon to be in the market for new machines.

Commenting on the Develon product in general Wayne said, “We’ve had very good reliability on our rail conversions, and its very rare that we have to go out to a Develon fault, and on the odd occasion we have had to, we just react to it, I would say we have converted 300 + Doosan/Develon machines over the years, and they have all proven to be very reliable. Effectively they are just civil engineering/construction machines converted to rail, so we know and understand the product very well.

So far, we have had loads of interest, and even in the first week our own social media activity has been fantastic, I would say we had somewhere in region of £3m of enquires in that first week which was phenomenal, and we expect a number of those enquiries to come to fruition over the coming months, at this moment time we have sold six machines, and we feel the momentum will start to build now which is exciting”.

The dealership has been very fortunate to gain the skills of two highly experienced service technicians, in the shape of Dan Robinson who has completed 20 years working on the Develon products with the former dealer, and Gary Jones who has served an equal number of years working on Komatsu products, Wayne said, “Both these lads are well sought after in the industry, and we are very lucky to have them come on board, you know, you can sell as much as you want, but if you can’t back it up with the service it wouldn’t be any good, product back-up is crucial in this game.  

Talking about his time as a Develon engineer Dan said, “So I was 19 years old when I started my apprenticeship with the previous dealers Mason Bros, and I spent 19 years and 2 months working with them. I was keen to continue working with the product that I know and love, and to continue to support the customers who have the product, obviously I felt I’d be better suited to continue to help Develon customers and bring my experience to the new dealership.

Going forward I would say customers can expect a seamless transition in the product, product knowledge and product support, the dealer’s name may have changed, but it’s essentially the same product experts behind the scenes. We have good parts stock here, but anything we have got can be sourced from the Develon main parts warehouse in Treforest, that is only 20 minutes down the road which we can pick up very easily.

In terms of identifying the parts needed, because I have that long established product knowledge, it’s easier to identify and guarantee that the correct parts are supplied every time, I like to think that after 20 years around them, I know my way around the machines!”.

Pictured: Left - Right: Lee Powell, Gareth Davies (Develon Europe), Will Gregory, Adam Davies, Carl Jones, Dan Robinson, Wayne Gregory, Carl Deans, (Develon Europe) Aled Stone, Gary Jones

One thing that struck home after this visit was that this is a serious business, that has the capabilities to look after the customers, the machines, the parts and service and a whole lot more besides, it certainly left a lasting impression on me.