EVERY HOUR of every day, 365 days a year, a team of self-managed operators keep a unique South Wales rubber-plastic plant stocked with raw material.

And what's so remarkable about these shift workers at the Advanced Elastomer Systems (AES) plant in Newport is that they work for a quite separate facilities management company, providing a bespoke outsourced materials handling service.

Pedus Service, of Adelaide Street, Newport, is perhaps best known as one of Wales's largest cleaning, catering and security service providers.

But in a new development the firm now also provides a round-the-clock material and mechanical handling service and even makes package boxes on the AES site. Pedus started the new service after going through a rigorous tendering process. Derek Coady, human resources manager at AES, said: "Our expertise is the knowledge of how to make the product.

"Having Pedus on site allows us to concentrate on our core skills, and allows them to become expert in some of the ancillary operations. "What we liked so much about them was that they were so close to our values in terms of their own priorities.

"That meant an absolute obsession with safety and an attention to detail second to none. "Their teams have to be able to work in an unsupervised environment, so Pedus's training was a key element."

Steve Tiley, operations director of Pedus, said: "Although many of our customers use our more traditional services, we are always delighted when we can provide an added-value service like this.

"Our on-site services at AES demonstrate the flexibility of our approach and the quality of our training and systems - it's been a big success.

"We see this as the way ahead for many firms, thinking laterally about what they do best and sub-contracting to a reliable partner those activities which they do not need to perform themselves."

The AES plant, at Traston Lane, Newport, is the world leader in the manufacture of this type of thermoplastic elastomer. They supply a wide variety of grades of their rubber/plastic compound which is used to make a broad range of products from trolley wheels to razor grips, from window seals to liquid containers.

*PICTURED: Derek Coady (left) and Steve Tiley of Pedus.