Global conveyor belt supplier Smiley Monroe Group has opened a new conveyor belt hub in the English Midlands in response to customer demand for faster lead times, particularly from its loyal customer base of service companies in England, Scotland, and Wales. Aggregates Business Editor GUY WOODFORD visited the new facility in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England, and spoke to Smiley Monroe CEO Chris Monroe about the new hub and the ambitious company’s wider growth plans.
These are exciting times at Smiley Monroe Group (Smiley Monroe). CEO Chris Monroe is speaking with Aggregates Business at the site office of Smiley Monroe’s new conveyor belt hub in central England, a hub offering full conveyor belt rolls and cut lengths of belt with expedited delivery options available for customers in England, Scotland, and Wales, including next-day delivery and same-day collection.
“The idea for the hub is one we’ve had for a while. The tipping point was the last two editions of Hillhead [biennial quarrying machinery exhibition in Buxton, Derbyshire, England], when we had customers asking us why we don’t have stock here on the ground. Those customers were typically service companies, and they weren’t giving us as much business as they could. Some of them couldn’t live with the lead time of two to three days across the Irish Sea. It became clear we needed to have a new [GB] stock and distribution model to better support the dozens of service companies we have across England, Scotland and Wales, who don’t have the space to keep huge amounts of stock.
“We chose a central England location for the hub after looking at the heat map of our [England, Scotland and Wales] service customer base and growing areas of demand, such as London and the Southeast, which is particularly linked to recycling sector growth and waste handling. Those service companies are going to be very, very busy going forward.”
Sat alongside Monroe as he talks to Aggregates Business is Jeremy Cross, the company’s Business Development Manager. “Our service company customers, including CSM Services and Rugeley Vulcanising Services in England, and Ace Vulcanising & Lining Solutions in Scotland, have long wanted to do more business with us, but were holding back because we didn’t have this conveyor belt hub. They are very loyal to us and, for the hub to work, we have to offer next-day delivery to job sites or, at the very least, the day after that.”
With a wide array of flat and chevron options available, the Lisburn, Northern Ireland-based manufacturer claims to hold the largest stock of conveyor belting across the UK and Ireland. Its range of premium conveyor belts and linked solutions includes Endless, Chevron, Customised Cleated, ToughFlex, Fabric Breaker, Cut Length and EP Multi-ply conveyor belts, along with ZIP CLIP replacement conveyor belts. The company also supplies high-quality Cut Rubber and Plastic Parts, PU conveyor belt cleaners, and conveyor impact bars and skirting.
“Because we are working with all the leading [crushing, screening and conveyor] OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers], we have such a variety of stock in Lisburn. We have already moved a lot of that material over here,” explains Monroe. “We can also quickly replenish stock in this hub. We are hiring three new staff for the hub, and have relocated a team leader from our Lisburn head office. However, we’re conscious of keeping the hub lean and cost-effective for our customers. Over the years, we’ve invested a lot in our ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] system and have a stock management tool within that. We also have a very slick Epicor automated order acknowledgement system.”
Recognised by Lloyds Banking Group investment partner LDC, in partnership with The Times newspaper, as one of the Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2024, Monroe highlights that the new English Midlands conveyor belt hub is part of Smiley Monroe’s plans to grow its UK business five-fold, from £2 million to £10 million a year, by the end of 2028.
“It is a target we’ve carefully projected out. It’s a stretch, but we’ve seen the path to reach it,” emphasises Monroe. “The new conveyor belt hub is a million-pound-plus investment, supported by ongoing annual investment.”
Asked about how much of the additional new hub-generated UK service customer business will be linked to quarry operators, Cross says: “It’s hard to say, as all our service customers service many sectors, including quarrying. Our new hub stock range includes ToughFlex, which we introduced as a [heavy-duty] upgrade conveyor belt for the OEM market. It has proven successful in GB among our resellers, who visit operating sites and see that some end customers require a conveyor belt offering a longer lifespan.”
Smiley Monroe has an impressive record in terms of sustainability and progressive working practices. In 2020, the team behind Northern Ireland’s only 100% green energy supplier for businesses, 3T Power, partnered with Smiley Monroe to ‘green’ the company’s Northern Ireland electricity supply. This clean energy transition encompassed the firm’s 55,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facilities and administrative offices, resulting in Smiley Monroe’s full Northern Ireland operation being powered purely by renewable energy generated by Northern Ireland-based wind turbines. The expected annual CO₂ reduction is around 270,000kg, equal to the weight of over 55 African elephants, in carbon offset. The Smiley Monroe-3T Power partnership is also guaranteeing long-term savings through a low-cost and secure energy tariff.
In summer 2023, the company implemented a four-day work week across its two Northern Ireland production facilities, following a successful trial at one of the sites. Since the move to a four-day work week, more and more Northern Ireland companies are adopting this approach, with successful examples demonstrated within Smiley Monroe’s own customer base.
Commenting on how the new conveyor belt hub will further enhance the company’s sustainability offer, Monroe says: “We haven’t done the hard numbers on it, but logically speaking, the amount of logistics it will reduce by not having to send things across the Irish Sea while consolidating a lot of required stock in one place makes it the right thing to do, both sustainability wise and commercially.”
Founded in Northern Ireland in 1979, Smiley Monroe has grown from a local service company into a global conveyor belt partner, with manufacturing and distribution facilities in the UK, the USA, and India, supplying some of the largest equipment manufacturers across the construction, recycling, and environmental sectors.
ZIP CLIP replacement belts are hugely popular in the U.S. Has Smiley Monroe seen an increase in sales of the product in the UK? “Not currently, but I see the potential for it. The plan is to work with our distribution service partners. As they become busier, they will only have a limited capacity unless they can scale up their companies. We have observed in our Northern Ireland services offering that it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit for that business area. I envisage having positive conversations with our GB distribution service partners to see if they can have some ZIP CLIPS in their own stock or offer their end customers bespoke, fast-delivery ZIP CLIPS to order.”
In 2026, Smiley Monroe will be exhibiting at major quarrying and construction equipment industry shows, including Hillhead (UK), steinexpo (Germany), CONEXPO/CON-AGG (U.S.), and bauma CONEXPO India.
Aimee McCracken, Smiley Monroe’s Head of Marketing, who is also hosting Aggregates Business at the new conveyor belt hub, says: “We’ve had our busiest ever six months marketing-wise in America, doing a conveyor belt of different shows, including AGG-1 [St Louis, Missouri]. We are looking to supply more of our product range to U.S. distributor companies. At CONEXPO/CON-AGG, we will mainly focus on [U.S.] dealers and growing our ZIP CLIP business, which is currently around 60% of our business there.”
“ZIP CLIP is changing the conveyor belting industry. There just wasn’t a product like it on the market before,“ continues Monroe. “In America, the first ZIP CLIP went out in 2020. We are only scratching the surface with it there. We are currently doing $2 million to $3 million in ZIP CLIP sales, but we can grow that by five to six times. We’ve onboarded 30 to 40 dealers [in the U.S.] in the last two years.“
“We’re already doing business in 48 of America’s 50 States,“ adds McCracken. “We’re also starting to supply [ZIP CLIP] to Central and Latin America.”
Monroe continues: “The longer-term plan is for Smiley Monroe to triple its growth to £100 million [revenue] by the end of 2028. In the next 12 months, we’re committing over £1 million to belt-cutting technology. It will see the installation of new machinery in our production facilities in Northern Ireland, America, and India.
“We are doubling our footprint in Hosur, India, and growing its sales team. We’ve won several significant contracts in India, which will kick in in the fourth quarter of this year. We’re also expecting 50-60% growth in India next year. There are also significant opportunities to supply our ZIP CLIP replacement conveyor belts to the rest of Asia, Africa, and Australia from India.
“In Europe, we’ve won over the last 18 months in excess of £5 million of new contracts. That has been really helpful to offset what has been a bit of a slowdown in the construction sector. All that new business is going to be massive for us. The shows coming up, like Hillhead and steinexpo, together with nurturing the £20 million to £30 million pipeline of leads we have, give us plenty to be getting on with out of our Northern Ireland-based business.”
Increased machinery automation and the growing use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in equipment engineering, manufacturing, and day-to-day onsite operations are notable features of the modern aggregates industry.
“We’ve set up an AI Council to look at how best to use AI in all departments,“ says McCracken. “Naturally, some departments have adopted the use of AI faster than others. We’re using it in marketing for different things, with some caution. When it comes to factory production, in the future, you’ll want automation and AI to be used as much as possible, reducing the amount of required process steps, increasing efficiency.“
“We’ve invested in an AI consultant to speak to the AI Council and deliver training, as it’s the Council members who mainly use it,“ adds Monroe. “From a governance perspective, it’s important to make sure your people are using it in the right way. We have been trialling Microsoft Copilot and will be reviewing how its use was. As we get used to AI, the speed at which it processes clean data, including financial and sales reporting, will help our people make smarter decisions.
“AI can also help progress our conveyor belt R&D [Research and Development], getting the belts smarter in terms of finding out where they are working, how they’re performing and their condition. Developing the software linked to this will be huge. If you can make it really easy for a customer to assess how long their belt has been running and when they need to reorder, and make that reorder process quick and smooth, the customer will have as much uptime as possible. Combining this and our ZIP CLIP solution will take our business to another level.”
