Don Kyatt Spare Parts, the home of Terrain Tamer 4WD Parts, has opened its 8th international and 18th overall branch in Santiago, Chile, continuing the company’s global expansion.
It is a far cry from the modest premises in Moorabbin, in Melbourne’s south east, that acted as the company’s home when it first started trading with little more than $600 in November 1969, but the Don Kyatt Group has only gone from strength to strength since then, opening branches Australia wide to service every corner of the country, and expanding internationally to take its Terrain Tamer and Flashlube brands into key markets worldwide.
Still owned and operated by Frank Hutchinson, who started the business 55 years ago, Don Kyatt Spare Parts boasts a product range of over 60,000 unique part numbers under the Terrain Tamer 4WD brand, essentially formed by parts that will strengthen a vehicle – right through the gearbox, transfer case, filters, suspension, bearing kits, brake, clutch and thousands of other parts, used in mining, military, farming, and emergency service applications, as well as by recreational 4WDrivers.
Opening its first international branch in New Zealand in 1986, the company has since expanded internationally to have its own warehouses in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, France, and South Africa, as well as a network of over 50 stockists worldwide, selling into over 80 countries
With operations under way as of April 2023, Terrain Tamer’s Chilean branch was set up and managed by Nicolas Bonilla, a native Spanish speaker who brought a working knowledge of both the industry and brand thanks to his tenure as a former assistant manager of Terrain Tamer’s European operations in France.
Bonilla has found and trained a team of local staff, one of whom, Simon Torealba, a business owner and long-time member of the South American 4WDriving community, is set to take over as manager when Bonilla returns to Europe later in 2024.
The warehouse will service workshops and industries such as mining, emergency services, and agriculture with Terrain Tamer Parts.
Additionally, South American consumption of LPG is among the highest in the world, lending itself as a key market for the export of the Don Kyatt Group’s additives and lubricants brand, Flashlube, and in particular, its original Valve Saver Fluid and kit products.
“Our brand’s beginnings are rooted in outback Australia and the extreme conditions that the terrain offers, and Chile has very similar environments, so it makes sense as a base for our operations in South America” Don Kyatt Spare Parts general manager Brent Hutchinson.
“We have been shipping to the region for 30 years, but it has been a slow process until now, so to have local stock holdings and to be able to service and grow our existing customer base more effectively changes the game for us. It has already led to customers in other key parts of South America, such as Argentina.”
The new Chilean branch is only the latest in a steady period of growth for the company. Prior to Chile, Terrain Tamer’s South African warehouse in Cape Town was close to opening when COVID-19, and its subsequent lockdown periods began, creating obvious difficulties in finishing the set up.
Perseverance paid off, though, and, after having to adapt to meet the numerous challenges faced, the branch was ready on schedule in May of 2020, opening up a range of new opportunities for the brand in the region, which boasts a rich 4WD industry, including many different mines.
Since then, Terrain Tamer has only seen more growth progress, navigating the many unknowns of the post pandemic business landscape, to open their second Queensland branch in Townsville, and also complete a new state of the art facility in Marsden Park, in the city’s north west in early 2022.
Built on a large 4500m2 site, the building itself covers an area of a little over 1900m2 and features two adjoining warehouses, as well as a new showroom and office area, and landscaping that features bottle trees and timber totems of varying heights, a nod to the Australian outback, that is rooted in so much of the Terrain Tamer brand, products, and values.
The company head office in Tottenham, in Melbourne’s inner west has also undergone an expansion, with the building of a large 15m-high warehouse facility, effectively doubling the pallet capacity at the site, which was purchased from GUD Holdings in 2012.
Further to this, Terrain Tamer Hut, a full-size duplication of Craigs Hut, a well-known landmark to 4WDrivers, built on Mount Stirling in the Victorian high country in the 1980s for filming of The Man from Snowy River, has been replicated at the front of the site, complementing the Terrain Tamer Test Track, used primarily for research and development, at the rear.
