They say necessity is the mother of invention. A saying never more true than with the birth of Dexion, brainchild of 50-year-old Greek-Australian, Demetrius Comino.
Acquisition & Growth
Dexion is a prominent member of Gonvarri Material Handling, a family of brands that can trace its origins back to 1856.
In 2018, Gonvarri Industries acquired the Constructor Group which included Dexion and other companies specializing in pallet racking, shelving systems, pull-out units, cantilevers and mezzanines, and mobile solutions.
The Dexion company (from the Ancient Greek meaning 'Right') was originally forged from Comino's hunger for efficiency gains across his printing business. Namely, the need for paper and type storage racks that could quickly and easily be dismantled and reused.
Comino's persistence and tenacity paid off. By 1947 he had developed the 'Dexion Slotted-Angle', a framing material that was, weight-for-weight, stronger than wood, and that could be stored in a fraction of the space needed for wooden timbers.
The first adjustable storage system had arrived and blazed the trail for Dexion's purpose-built pallet racking and shelving systems.
Dexion quickly became the benchmark for innovation with a number of outstanding milestones:
- 1956 Slotted-Angle used to build Olympic Stadium
- 1957 1st Mobile Pallet Racking installation
- 1963 ‘Dexiongrad’ built to support the Yugoslavia earthquake relief
- 1970 Production of Steel Shelving begins
- 1980 1st Paternoster installed
- 1999 Dexion is acquired by Constructor Group and the P90 system launched
- 2000 Hi280 system launched
- 2003 1st Tornado automatic storage installed
- 2011 Cantilever range launched
- 2014 P90+ system launched
- 2016 Testing Lab – in-house quality control
- 2018 (January) Dexion is acquired by Gonvarri Industries
- 2018 (April) Automation market - key supplier of Crane Racking and Mini Load solutions
- 2019 Major investments in manufacturing units
- 2020 Longspan Shelving 3 (LS3) and Full Warehouse Automation
- 2021 New Medium Duty Cantilever
It is a testament to those early pioneers that these systems are still much in demand today.