CINCINNATI, OHIO – Finn Corp., manufacturers of a range of pneumatic material application products, expanded its product line in a big way – literally – when it add the line of Express Blower products from Rexius after Finn’s parent company, DHG Corp., purchased the assets of Express Blower from Rexius Forest By-Products, Eugene, Ore.
“We’re ecstatic about the opportunity this deal gives us,” explained David Nelson, president and CEO of DHG, adding that the two companies will operate independent of each other and Express Blower will remain in Oregon. “We see a grand opportunity because of the strong position this gives us in the market, and there’s obviously a tremendous demand in the market for labor-saving machines.”
The Express Blower units resemble tractor/trailer trucks and generally have a 40-cubic-yard capacity, and they complete the product lineup for Finn, which already had a series of skid-, trailer- and truck-mounted Bark Blowers with capacities from 1.5 cubic yards to 16 cubic yards. “We now have all of the machines for contractors’ needs,” pointed out Wally Butman, director of marketing for Finn. “There are people who will see the Express Blower machine and decide they don’t apply enough mulch for that, and then they can move into a Finn Bark Blower. Then there are those Bark Blower users who come to us looking for more capacity and capabilities, and they can look at the Express Blower units.”
Butman admitted that the market for the Express Blower machines remains relatively undefined, but Finn will have help of the person who helped create this market in the first place. Arlen Rexius Sr., president of the company, will serve as a consultant to Finn and has joined DHG’s board of directors. “Rexius developed the Express Blower technology years ago out of necessity when it was focused on being an applicator, and then they started marketing it as a separate division after they built machine that fit what they needed – on a trailer, with a PTO and so forth,” Butman explained.
Regarding the market for these machines, Nelson predicted that it will only continue growing for a couple of reasons. “Mulch application is so labor intensive that contractors who put down mulch need a better way to do it, and even the ones who only do a little mulch still apply hundreds of cubic yards,” he noted. “The bigger contractors put down thousands of yards every year, and that justifies the investment in a pneumatic machine pretty quickly.”
Some contractors have turned to these machines to do more than just save labor – they use them to grow their business. “Landscape contractors are making a business out of mulching as well as the application of other erosion control materials using these machines,” Nelson observed, explaining that these contractors set up a separate mulching business and work a lot as subcontractors for other contractors in their markets.
