Hydraulic cylinder contract manufacturing

We believe that contract manufacturing is a partnership that offers both parties a trusting relationship, which in turn helps to achieve the best possible results. At Hydroline, we always pursue to build long-lasting and mutually beneficial cooperation with our customers. We are a value-adding partner with a desire to offer our customers the best tools to make their business as effective as possible.

We aim for long and mutually beneficial partnerships and are happy to say that our oldest contract manufacturing clients date back to the 1970s. We work closely with global leading mobile work machine OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) in multiple different customer segments. If you have taken a closer look at our page, you might have noticed that our main customers segments are forestry, load handling, agriculture & maintenance, and mining & construction. In these segments we are proud to serve customers such as Cargotec, Sandvik, Valtra, Epiroc and Normet, along with many more industry leaders.

🏭 A typical process of establishing a contract manufacturing partnership:

1. The OEM / customer has technical or cost-saving needs
2. The OEM maps out the possible suppliers and their technical ability and costs
3. The OEM requests quotations and technical proposals
4. The OEM performs an audit
5. Contract negotiations
6. Product approval before serial production – Sample products from the supplier
7. Contract approval and production ramp-up

At Hydroline, our typical contract period is three to five years. After that the contract is typically updated, if needed, and continued for an indefinite period.

🔍 Benefits of Contract Manufacturing

In our industry the production volumes are big. With contract manufacturing, the OEM gets the benefit of securing the acquisition of a great number of specifically designed cylinders annually.

Because hydraulic cylinders are not standard “off the shelf” products, they typically cannot be bought just anywhere with a short delivery time. A contract customer always has a supplier for a specific item they regularly need. At Hydroline, we pursue to find the best solutions in terms of technical quality and logistics solutions, such as delivery times, warehousing, and buffers.

One of the contract manufacturing advantages is the quality workmanship of a familiar supplier that knows the component and the customer’s final product. As a supplier we take care of the component manufacturing, and our customer can focus on their core competence, machine manufacturing. This also means that the customer has no need to invest in their own component manufacturing.

The benefit of forming a long-lasting partnership with a hydraulic cylinder manufacturer like Hydroline is that an OEM gets our expertise in all areas of our business, not only in cylinder manufacturing. We’ll strive to find the best possible holistic solutions by using our knowledge from electric and electrohydraulic actuators to coating and IoT solutions in addition to designing and manufacturing hydraulic cylinders. And we are not only the experts of manufacturing but also repairing; in addition to our manufacturing business, our partially owned partner HL-Hydraulics offers repair and maintenance services for every hydraulic cylinder, despite the original manufacturer.

We take pride on ourselves on being flexible and responsive to our customer’s needs.

💎 Cooperation & Proprietary

Cooperation is the key to a successful partnership. We bring our expertise in our products and services to the table, while the customer is the expert on their final machine into which our hydraulic cylinder(s) will be integrated. When we join forces, we can find the best possible solution.

As a partner, we aim for the closest possible cooperation in all aspects, from our customer’s product development to understanding their complete strategy. A big part of being an excellent supplier partner is to continuously and proactively seek and provide our customers more sustainable and cost-effective solutions and new technologies that add value to our customer. In order to keep up with the latest industry trends and constantly be able to keep up with the development, we also have built a well-structured supplier and partner network with whom we are able to come up with better solutions and innovations.

When a customer develops a new solution or device, we emphasize the importance of us being involved as early as possible in the development process. This way we can have as much influence as feasible on the final solution and find the optimal result. Our influence is much less if we are only involved in the design process at a later stage.

Hydroline’s longest partnerships have deep roots in its history, and many of our major customer relationships are over 20 years long. We commit to being our customer’s true partners in business development and technical improvement.