Kempe Engineering servicing the Pilbara for more than 25 years
Kempe Engineering comprises market-leading businesses that specialise in delivering world class engineering, process equipment, asset maintenance, manufacturing and recycling services across multiple industry segments including mining and resources, aluminium smelting and refining, industrial manufacturers and renewable energy.
Kempe Engineering has secured a major expansion of works with Rio Tinto, extending from its coastal operations to encompass the entirety of Rio’s Pilbara iron ore operations — a contract won on the back of a skilled, locally based workforce that delivers safer, faster and right first time, every shutdown.
Service excellence
Kempe is a leading local service provider to the mining industry — delivering on-site and off-site services through its national branch network, supplying OEM and MRO spares to Australia’s largest mining houses, and specialising in fluid power systems and pump refurbishment for the drilling sector. Bespoke mining equipment is custom designed in-house by Kempe’s engineering, technology and projects division.
The recent acquisitions of Jack’s Hydraulic Services and Hydraulic Component Services give clients a complete hydraulic pump and motor lifecycle service — service exchange, component supply, field service, remanufacture and recommissioning — staffed by skilled local technicians for faster turnaround and lower total cost of ownership.
At the same time, the company is expanding its industrial product supply business, aligning with global original equipment manufacturers and introducing its own branded products.
Kempe represents leading OEM brands including Parker Hannifin, Bosch Rexroth, Donaldson Hy-Pro and SMC Pneumatics, and has recently partnered with Hillmar Industries for braking and cable reel products into the mining conveyor and port sector, and with Ampo Poyam Valves for severe service applications, alongside its own branded range of watermark ball valves. Kempe has also recently been appointed as the Delta Xero partner, adding advanced contamination control and fluid conditioning technology to its hydraulic and lubrication offering.
With more than 40 years of operation and 16 permanent facilities across five states, Kempe puts skilled local people, spares and accredited workshop capacity close to the work — shorter lead times, more flexibility and lower delivered cost. Process and mechanical engineering is handled in-house, with ISO 9001, 45001 and 14001 certification across all operations.
For site and maintenance planners across the sector, the message is simple: one call to Kempe covers it all.
Same place, same face, every shutdown.
Unlike contractors that rely on labour hire, Kempe employs the vast majority of its workforce directly — a skilled, locally based crew that returns to the same sites, shutdown after shutdown. That continuity means safer operations, faster mobilisation, work done right first time and lower overall cost. New personnel are mentored in Kempe’s zero harm culture at existing operations before transitioning new locations, ensuring familiarity with Rio Tinto’s systems and safety expectations.
That continuity underpins the company’s safety performance — more than two decades without a lost time injury, a standout record for an operator in high-risk industrial environments.
Kempe’s permanent Karratha base anchors its Rio Tinto operations, and the company has actively recruited 20 families to the town — stable, long-term residents invested in the place they work. Through Kempe Services Pilbara, its Karratha-based Indigenous joint venture partner, Kempe creates genuine Indigenous participation in the resources sector, and as a founding member of youth mental health not-for-profit Read the Play, the company invests in the broader communities where its people live.
Expertise backed by global experience
Internationally, Kempe has designed, built and commissioned more than 800 pieces of specialist equipment across 32 sites worldwide — conveying, crushing and screening, and turnkey processing plants for major mining and metals operations. That engineering capability sits behind every shutdown crew in the Pilbara, and Kempe is actively taking on new fixed plant maintenance clients nationally.
A skilled local workforce. Same place, same face, every shutdown. Safer, faster, right first time, flexible and at lower cost — it all adds up to Kempe’s promise: excellence in all we do.
