The mill's portability means it can be taken to remote places like Sierra Nevada, US. There are countless stories of people who, using the mill, have built their own houses and in some cases re-built their lives.Īfter Victoria's disastrous Black Saturday bushfires this portable mill helped salvage millions of lineal metres of blackened timber. Last year, the company built and sold about 1,000 machines. That was 22 years ago, when the farming family turned to manufacturing when wool prices took a dive. Mr Lucas and his brother Rex developed and built the machine along with their father Geoff. The Lucas family is renowned for being highly inventive. There are also strong domestic sales, often to farmers who use the portable mill to cut fallen trees into useful timber for building farm sheds or stockyards. Some of the destinations include the wilds of Alaska, the jungles of the African Congo, the giant Redwood forests of the United States and remote villages in the New Guinea Highlands. Three quarters of the mills made in the Lucas factory at Wooragee near Beechworth are exported. ( Supplied: Lucas Mill) Mills reaching Alaska, Congo, US, New Guinea Highlands ![]() Warren Lucas demonstrates a mill to two chiefs in traditional headdress in Papua New Guinea. "There has been a long-standing problem of Chinese companies infringing patent rights of foreigners," Tracey Hendy of FPA Patent Attorneys said.īut getting evidence that would be strong enough to challenge the counterfeiters in a Chinese court of law was a daunting and difficult task. The company sought urgent advice from a Melbourne patent attorney firm. ![]() "And he found a company that was even advertising it basically as a Lucas Mill." "Matt, who is my right-hand man, spends a lot of time on the internet just keeping an eye on what our competitors are up to. "We've always been concerned that there'd be a copier in somewhere like China," Lucas Mills co-owner Warren Lucas explained. The company's highly successful portable sawmill - exported to more than 100 countries worldwide - was featured on a Chinese website.īut it was not their website and it was not their machine, but a near exact imitation. In March 2014, a family-run engineering business in north-eastern Victoria awoke to a nightmare.
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