Albury’s BF Panels a country practice (Regional NSW)

Scott French’s father Bob started BF Panels (BFP) in l973 in Lavington and moved to North Albury, country NSW in l978, towing wrecks off the Hume Highway and repairing them.

Today BFP is a large repair shop with all the attributes of a good city shop. BFP was certainly in the running for the best NSW large shop and given a year when the competition hadn’t been so fierce, it might have won this accolade.

Well equipped and running two paint systems, Sikkens for its BMW and Glasurit for its other vehicles, BFP has a dedicated aluminium paint and repair bay. It carries out 30-40 repairs a week and like so many country bodyshops has its own tow fleet of four trucks and a yard full of heart-breaking wrecks.

BFP is situated on a new industrial site and it had a smaller satellite bodyshop in the CBD but recently it combined the two into one new BFP site of 11,000 square metres, with 2400 under the roof and 2000 in production.

Water can be a problem in country NSW but not for BFP. With such a large roof space it already has 30,000 litres of water in its tanks, only using town water for the offices. An interceptor handles the full drain floor that flows into the wash bay pit for separation.

With the economic downturn you would expect it to be less busy but that’s not the case, with both shops at capacity. With 35 staff, this is a large business employing eight spray painters, nine panels beaters, two detailers, two estimators, a quality control officer, shop foreman and production manager.

The shop employs two tow truck drivers. When not towing, one does wheel alignments and suspensions while another handles the spare parts role. BFP uses DNS quoting and is an accredited BMW and Peugeot preferred repairer.

French says there is still between 2500 and 3000 square metres left to expand their shop and they could consider truck and bus work in the future.

BFP is a AAMI, NRMA, Allianz, GIO, Elders and Lumley shop and does work for most other insurance companies as well.

Staff recreation areas are comfortable with a microwave, television and clean and tidy conditions. The storage yard is 3000 square metres in size and courtesy cars are available for all customers.