For more than 20 years Cosalt has been designing, manufacturing and supplying safety clothing to the UK rail industry.
Today, over 30,000 rail personnel wear Cosalt personal protective equipment (PPE) and workwear to keep them safe, dry, warm and comfortable at work.
Not surprisingly, the company’s client list reads like a who’s who of the rail infrastructure business with names like Network Rail, Babcock Rail and Bombardier to name just a few. Cosalt has a knack of maintaining long-term relationships with key customers to the benefit both parties.
Underpinning Cosalt’s success and longevity is the company’s focus on producing garments that are not only fit for purpose but also surpass legislative requirements without compromising on wearer comfort and fit.
To achieve this Cosalt works in close partnership with its suppliers and uses only high quality fabrics. This is what gives Cosalt’s garments their characteristic hardwearing attributes and reduced through life costs.
As well as caring about the safety and comfort of the end-user, Cosalt has built a reputation for caring about the purchasers of its products. This starts at the design stage. The company is willing to invest time designing and developing, testing and trialling new garments to meet a specific customer need, rather than supply a standard product range, off the shelf.
All this is possible because Cosalt has the resources to design market-leading products in-house and manufacture ‘wearer trial garments’ at its own UK manufacturing facility in Yorkshire. The company currently holds in stock over £700,000 of raw materials so that it has the flexibility to respond quickly to market opportunities.
Explained Jon Crossland, the Managing Director of Cosalt Workwear:
“Our many years in the business has given us a unique understanding of the rail industry so we know how to deliver what our customers want. Some approach us from the starting point of cost while others want to incorporate specific design features. In all cases we are driven by their requirements. The first stage of every job is to meet up with customers and explore exactly what it is they are looking for.”
“Our design and development teams have a great deal of experience and they understand precisely what makes a product work for the end user. We are continually reviewing the market and evaluating competitor products. We look at laundry analysis reports and assess how different fabrics wear through the product lifecycle. These findings are presented to customers in a structured way to help them choose the solution that is right for them, not us.”
But Cosalt’s strengths run deeper than their ability to design and develop market-leading products. The company’s managed service option is a turnkey solution that takes safety to a new level.
Cosalt will take on the responsibility for laundering and maintaining the garments and making sure they comply with health and safety standards. They will maintain the exacting quality control and product management procedures that allow every garment to be tracked and traced and finally decommissioned.
As part of this managed service offering, Cosalt has spent in excess of £800,000 on IT since 2008 to create an advanced paperless system that can integrate seamlessly with a customer’s own enterprise, resource and planning systems.
This provides access to real time information on procurement requests, orders placed, ongoing support issues, invoices, payments and key performance indicator reports. Customers are able to take decisions based on clear, concise up-to-date information. The system is helping to improve safety, increase efficiency and drive down overhead costs.
Said Jon: “This is what makes Cosalt unique. Our ‘Fully Managed Service’ offers everything a customer would require to manage a contract with ease. Customers benefit from a reliable and fast system that can be used to track and trace products from ‘cradle to grave’ through our wardrobe management feature.
“A customer can log on to our network, order their requirements and have them delivered to a specific address. We can then invoice in exactly the same way via the customers’ own internal networks.”
Every item that leaves Cosalt’s production line is given a unique barcode, and from there it is tracked for the rest of its life. Cosalt can see which garments are allocated to which individuals, how many times these products have been laundered and how many times they have been replaced or repaired.
Looking to the future Jon believes the biggest challenge facing the industry is from cheap imported PPE as organisations everywhere look to drive down costs.
“Rail personnel should be able to rely on their workwear to keep them highly visible and safe in all levels of light as well as dry, warm and comfortable. Yet we come across products that might look good on first viewing but after being used and laundered a few times, need replacing. This is not good for the customer because it can significantly increase the overall life costs of a contract.”
“Although many of these imports carry various certifications we always recommend that customers do their own testing at a registered UK testing facility. You need to know that a product not only passes the required legislation, but that it also keeps performing over time.”
“We recently completed a six month project to review alternative products within the UK market and over 85% of these did not stand up to the rigours of wash and hi-vis tests after wearer trials. We also found differences between garment batches. This is why Cosalt insists on using superior fabrics that by their very nature tend to perform beyond the minimum requirements.”
Cosalt can supply everything form next-to-skin underwear through to second layer workwear and outer foul weather waterproofs, all in a range of high performance fabrics.
Concluded Jon: “At Cosalt, we took the strategic decision some time ago to maintain our own integrity and only supply quality garments. Our products are ‘top end’ because they will perform as expected through the life of a contract. We are proud of this. We will not compromise on safety. By working in partnership with our suppliers and customers, we have been able to create cost-effective solutions that meet the long term needs of the rail industry.”
