30 Years of High Quality Design, Innovative Development, and Customer Support

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This year marks the 30th anniversary of AusProof opening its doors, beginning its journey to provide the mining, tunnelling and pumping industries with cable coupler solutions of the highest possible quality. To celebrate an anniversary, most people usually like to reminisce on how it all started, so we thought we’d start this year by taking a stroll down memory lane.

The year is 1977, with Philip Marks founding Proof Engineering, an odds-and-ends engineering firm in South Africa. While this company was sold in 1994, with Philip and his wife Wendy relocating to her home country of Australia, several key moments in the prologue (if you will) of AusProof occurred during this nearly 20 year period, such as the design and manufacture of a 4-way junction box in 1978, the release of Philip’s first 6.6kV coupler in 1980, and the subsequent release of his first 11kV coupler in 1985.

In 1990, with the cooperation of Khutala Mine, Philip’s research into cable coupler connections made a rather large impact on the cable coupler industry, conducting the first ever tests for phase to phase faults, purposefully causing several couplers to fail to the point of destruction. Through these tests he was able to successfully prove with his silicon phase barrier that all air must be expelled from a coupler when a connection is made, and that his silicon composite could extinguish arching, preventing couplers from exploding underground. This was the beginning of phase to phase segregation with earth.

After relocating to Australia, Philip and Wendy established AusProof, starting with a clean slate, a completely vacant block of land, building everything literally from the ground up. Much of our equipment had to be shipped over from South Africa, with some of this equipment still going strong! Over the years, AusProof’s humble beginning has grown from its four simple sheds to the larger factory constructed in 2011, in order to match the needs of the industries we serve, and continue to design and develop high quality cable coupler solutions.

Over the past 30 years, AusProof has achieved many major milestones in our journey. Our amazing 35kV, released in 2013 after just an impressive 15 weeks of hard work by our R&D team, was the first of its kind, a technological marvel that remains unmatched. Continuing our drive to innovate and improve customer operations, in 2015 we released our new and improved stainless steel 11kV with its removable flange feature, the only one of its kind on the market, assisting in the reduction of downtime and associated costs. The following year also saw the release of our aluminium high voltage Fibre Optics range that utilises expanded beam technology the following year. In 2019 we released a stainless steel 60A plug and receptacle range capable of handling up to a mammoth 90A, and in 2020, after two years of extensive trial and error, the LED Live Line Indicator was released, replacing its neon bulb predecessor whilst remaining (very importantly) battery-free.

Seeking to provide safe, reliable and high quality cable coupler solutions not just to the Australian market, but to industries around the globe, AusProof has seen multiple international expansions over the years in order to provide greater support, product accessibility, and supply chain stability to overseas sites. In 2008, AusProof established JoynX in South Africa, KonNx Inc. in the USA, and KonNx (KEL) in Chile, with JoynX undergoing a rebrand to KonNx Africa in 2021 for better global alignment and recognition. The latest to join the expanding AusProof family is KonNx UK, opened just recently in 2021.

While it’s fun and interesting to look back on how things began, how about we end this tale with a “To be continued…”. AusProof is far from done pushing the boundaries and exploring the unknown in cable coupler technology and electrical conductivity. Excitingly, late last year, we became the first cable coupler OEM in Australia to invest in our own in-house on-site high voltage testing laboratory, in order to learn not just how high voltage conductivity works, but to understand why. We’ve also welcomed to the team the esteemed Professor Jerry Walker, to further our knowledge and understanding of cable coupler technology, in order to better serve the mining, pumping and tunnelling industries.

We also have some new releases planned for this year, so keep your eyes on our socials and keep your ears to the ground (so to speak, our sales reps will use their phones of course) for any important new updates. Let’s get cracking, 2024 has only just begun!

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