My view (fwiw) is this company has little future.I get little...

My view (fwiw) is this company has little future.
I get little solace from it even though I do not hold it as an investment.
There are many good people who have and still do work at NLX (and some duds).

However, as I understand it;
-they do not own the 'Gardena' brand (garden stuff) this is German owned.
-Industrial hose division was sold off extremely cheap (and the name went to thin air, it is no longer).
-Nylex also sold off some direct market access it had.
-Many products like mesh, drainage etc are/ will be history.
-NLX brought in container after container of garden hose into Melbourne, then realised they had no where to store it...

I will lay London to a brick that retail products (garden) will not last 2-3 years (at least in current form), they took the option many years ago of supporting chain stores against independents. As a consequence we now have all the imported products coming in cheaper (yes not as good). The market has picked these up and now they have wiped Gardena from the shelves. Currently Nylex products are a boutique item, some items will gain sales on drought etc but the costs of promotion will kill it. Chain stores will screw pricing to the ground, and Nylex do not stand up to it well. Take a look at your local hardware or retail outlet and you will see Nylex lucky to have a corner spot, where other products now have position.
How they expect to make money out of Bunnings, Kmart, Danks etc, is beyond me (loyal customers... lol).

These products have a low margin (as compared with imports) and are more expensive. Have a look at a Nylex tap timer in price compared to others and see what you think, yet the reseller actually gets a better return (and stock turn) on the cheaper item.

Would love to see what sort of impact Willow and others have had on the 'Esky' market...

Poly tanks is now a reasonably large business, Nylex is a 'small' player. Again marketing and freight costs will stop them. Competitors generally have manufacturing closer to end users (dont know how many of you have seen the trucks travelling around with tanks on them, but few have Nylex on them) and as they are normally manufactured in regional areas a lower cost base. It is also a fractured market place.

Why do they bother with Ajax and Senco? It is not what they do (although they historically sold product to these divisions from other divisions and still had to enforce it as they were often not competitive)
Nylex historically (and reasonably recently) have had poor controls over raw materials. Products would go out using much more raw product than what they should have (20mtr coils being 30+ when unrolled, mesh being way too heavy). This made customer love them but Nylex was paying for it. I am not convinced any of this has improved.

Automotive a solution... hohoho...
If anyone has done business with auto majors you know what is going to happen here (and has happened to Nylex in this market previously) a right toyal rogering. Melbourne has lost big chunks of auto manufacturing of recent, this will not stop and more and more product will come ex China. Toyota is also setting up its own associated plants in Laverton near Altona plant, Ford is assisting new players into plastic market to stitch up Venture Plastics and on it goes.

Nylex has had real opportunities in the past but has failed at every opportunity to capitalise, instead they have stole defeat from the jaws of victory continuously.

And dont get me going on the environmental and other issues at Mentone.... (although they may yet get out of part of that)...

Nylex is not a low cost operation, even with low debt it will chew through cash.