Ross Performance Parts

BLACKTOWN-BASED Ross Tuffbond Inc is one of nine Australian companies given the chance to show their wares to a global market last week.

The company, which designs and produces high performance parts for racing cars and boats, as well as parts for buses and trucks, took part in an international trade show in America.

Chief executive Ross Clothier and a five-member team joined representatives of eight companies at the Performance Racing Industry Expo in Orlando, Florida.

Ross Tuffbond is a part of an Australian automotive industry that supports 30,000 jobs and has an annual turnover of $5.6billion.

Leading foreman Darren Sunderland said the company had been around for nearly 30 years, starting in Seven Hills before moving to Forge Street.

It was started in 1981 by Ross Clothier, a mechanical engineer who started out in the NSW Railways workshop in 1966 as a fitter and machinist.

Mr Clothier then joined the Sydney Water Police where he designed and produced speedboat parts in the early 1970′s,  Mr Sunderland said.

Machine parts: Darren Sunderland at the Ross Tuffbond Inc workshop. Picture: Simon Bennett

He set up Rosco Marine Services in 1981 to design and develop a rubber-bonding technique for standard harmonic balancers/crank pulley dampers for marine boats and race cars.

“It was renamed Ross Tuffbond when it also became the largest manufacturer of harmonic balancers/crank pulley dampers, truck and bus components.”

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