Let’s Talk Parts: Interview with James Berry

The Sepro parts department works with every branch of Sepro and with every customer. Their work is critical to ensuring our mixing, mining, and aggregate equipment meets the long-term objectives for operating sites. James Berry is the Sepro Parts Manager and has been with Sepro for over a decade. He’s worked in our technical service division, sales, and project management. His experience with onsite commissioning, maintenance, and repair ensures that the parts team can work quickly with customers to get them the mixing, mining, or aggregate equipment parts they need to minimize downtime. 

We interviewed James to update customers on the new and existing services that the Sepro parts team can offer to help maintain their equipment and ensure machine longevity. Read the full interview below!

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Q: Could you give us a basic overview of the Sepro parts department and some of the services offered?

JB: Sure. I’m fortunate to manage a great team of knowledgeable individuals whose goal is to provide accurate, on-time parts support to all our customers around the world. We accomplish this by working closely with our technical service department, finance team, and supply chain, while also coordinating with customers, procurement, maintenance, and logistics departments to ensure that we are providing the correct part at the correct pricing, on time. 

We also offer to work with customer maintenance and stores departments to help with recommended inventory levels, ensuring the part numbers are correct, providing logistics support (should it be required), and liaising with their procurement and finance departments to ensure that there’s an overall seamless parts ordering process.
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Q: Why should a Sepro capital equipment purchaser come back to Sepro to get their spare parts? Why not a third-party local vendor?

JB: That’s a common question. I think it’s best answered by an experience I had a few years ago. I was in Africa and we took a Falcon concentrator – the gold concentrator – offline to do some maintenance. When we got the part from their store’s department, we went to install it. It did not fit. We found out after the fact that it was sourced locally. So that’s one of the advantages you have with buying OEM parts is they’re reliable and they’re engineered for an exact fit. Downtime is a horrible thing to experience, especially for a maintenance crew that’s already under huge demand and pressure on their big mine sites.
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Q: Sepro has a large global customer base. What can Sepro parts customers expect when they communicate with your team?

JB: Although our head office is in Vancouver, Canada, we have a pretty diverse group. We can offer support in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Afrikaans, Russian, and of course, English.
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Q: Once a customer contacts you, what can they expect? What can they expect throughout the whole Sepro parts order from beginning to end?

JB: If the customer has already identified the exact part that they’re looking for, they can just reach out via email to us and we can provide some price and availability. Due to having customers all over the world, email typically is the best way to contact us because of time zones. 

Of course, they can reach out to the office directly at any time; most of those phone calls will go to our cell phones. But if they don’t know the exact part they’re looking for, then maybe some further investigation is required. If that’s the case, I would definitely recommend they reach out via email so we can use photos or videos to help identify the exact part required.
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Q: Regarding ongoing machine maintenance for customers, what does the Sepro parts team recommend for parts replacement schedules? How can Sepro customers approach this or manage this?

JB: Though that’s a common question, it’s also a very difficult question to answer because each customer has their own particular operating parameters. We do provide a recommended spare parts list with each technical manual when a piece of equipment is sold, and within it are some guidelines to give operators an understanding of what they can expect. However, I would encourage customers or operators to reach out to the parts team so that we can help them understand their particular situation after they’ve had their equipment installed.
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Q: Getting to the nitty-gritty, what are the payment terms and the currencies accepted for Sepro parts?

JB: Most payments today are done by electronic bank transfers. However, again, being a multinational company, we accept Australian dollars, US dollars, British pounds, Euros, and Canadian. Also, for some of the smaller orders, we accept Visa and MasterCard.
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Q: Last question. How does someone contact you? What are their next steps?

JB: A very important question! Please email us by clicking here. That email is monitored by our entire department, so we respond within one business day. We can also be reached by phone at +(1) 604-888-5568.