Innovators

How Tidy International helps float Kingfisher’s boats

When the Mason family bought into a Tauranga-based manufacturer of catamaran-hulled boats, the business management software being used included TidyEnterprise and Xero, critical to the co-ordination and control of their production and supply. After steadily maturing the workflows over the course of the year that followed the Mason family involvement, Kingfisher Boats today enjoys a software system that provides accurate stock and Work-in-Progress reports, with further developments in the works to accelerate overall business efficiency, optimise production processes and deliver company-wide data visibility. Kingfisher Boats is both designer and builder of the Kingfisher range of quality aluminium vessels with catamaran hulls sold through an approved marine distributor network. This growing New Zealand business, with its workshop facilities based in the city of Tauranga, happens to be located in the same city as Tidy’s international headquarters. Kingfisher has built up a solid range of marine-craft products for over 19 years, including commercial and recreational vessels ranging from 3m to 18m in length. Laura Mason, General Manager of the company, comments “what sets Kingfisher Boats apart is our focus on alloy catamarans. We’re unique in producing metal cats under 6 metres with a single engine – delivering a more stable platform in a compact package.” Situation Upon joining the business, Mason soon recognised opportunities for enhancing the manufacturing processes. Applying experience she gained in the automotive industry, with its long history of process standardisation and optimisation; from the production-line efficiency made famous by Henry Ford to Toyota’s Kaizen methodology of continuous improvement, Mason sought to advance the somewhat unstructured approach characteristic of smaller businesses towards a defined and repeatable model. Mason emphasises, “this does need to be differentiated depending on the boat we’re manufacturing. When we’re doing a multimillion dollar 18-metre vessel, there’s a lot of customisation so repeatability isn’t important. But […]

The Interview: Mike Hendry, chief digital officer, Steel & Tube

HERA member, Steel & Tube is one of the oldest and largest providers of steel products and solutions in New Zealand. It sources, processes and distributes steel products to customers across New Zealand through its national network and also makes steel products to order on a project basis. The company has expertise across a broad range of sectors, from residential to commercial construction, large infrastructure products, manufacturing, rural and bespoke design. HERA spoke to Chief Digital Officer, Mike Hendry, about the future of the steel and construction sectors and the opportunity and challenges the company faces. How are you finding current business conditions? While demand growth for steel has been strong, macro conditions have been challenging with global supply chain constraints, a higher pricing environment and Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions. The key focus for our team has been to maintain availability of product and high levels of service for our customers while navigating the current market conditions. We have seen strong growth in demand over the past year across a range of sectors and are fortunate to have a significant pipeline of secured contract work in place across the country. The residential construction market remains strong, particularly in Auckland, and government investment is driving large infrastructure projects across the regions. Commercial construction activity has been increasing and manufacturing expanding which is also driving up demand for steel products and solutions. Market conditions look to remain positive. How has your company been impacted by the pandemic? Our scale, diversity across a range of sectors and the ability of our team to adapt to new working conditions have helped to offset the impacts of the pandemic and the current challenging market conditions. We are very proud of our team and their efforts which have ensured we can keep providing our customers with […]

Hoop talks to NZ Manufacturer

Chris Hood, Director, Hoop Ltd.. How long have you been in business? We’ve been operating since 2004 and are one of the only third party agencies in New Zealand that brings promotional activity to life. We’re also the largest POS logistics provider to the FMCG industry. We started Hoop because we realised that nobody was providing a comprehensive brand activation or co-packing service to leading retailers. While we’ve had a lot of success with these services for over a decade, we’ve expanded our suite of services by establishing New Zealand’s most advanced co-packing solution to support local businesses to deliver shelf-ready products. How are you finding current business conditions? Covid-19 brought about many obstacles that we never could have foreseen. We had to delay the launch of our new co-packing service, and 95% of our weekly work was put on hold due to all the lockdowns last year. Luckily, the business has bounced back to be in pretty good shape, our co-packing service is now live and operational, our merchandising service work has returned to pre-COVID levels and our POS logistics is up and running again. What are the issues facing the country’s supply chain currently? This issue has affected us more than we had first anticipated given we do not import any products ourselves. However, a large portion of our clients are fully reliant on offshore supply chain and as such, a lot of our forecasted work for the first quarter in 2021 had been postponed due to shipping issues. The workload will still come but we cannot recoup our costs that were accrued during that quarter and then when it does come, we then face the challenge of scheduling the delayed work in with our existing scheduled tasks. How difficult is it to improve these issues? It’s all […]

Where are the world class leaders?

For more than three decades, Ian Walsh, Managing Director of Intent Group, has been driving improvements in organisations around the globe. Ian understands deeply what is required to deliver and sustain improvement. Here he shares his thoughts on what New Zealanders can do to recover from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. The media coverage of recent elections, and their results both here and overseas, have given us a fascinating exposition on leadership, with starkly different approaches as to how to manage Covid-19 and the changes required to get on top of this pandemic. In my experience, no change initiative can succeed without strong leadership. Great leaders articulate a compelling vision and provide a road map to define the way forward. They create coalitions of key people aligned with the same purpose (think JFK – where are we going?… Moon. When by?… End of the decade). They role model the behaviours. This is very Mahatma Gandhi – become the change you envision. When things are bad, they take responsibility. When things are good, they praise their team. They encourage everyone to participate and contribute without blame or fear. In doing so, they create a learning culture that sustains well beyond their tenure. Selfless, long-term thinking. During the 1990’s I had the privilege of working with Kimberley Clark in the USA. In the book ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins, Kimberley Clark was one of only eleven Fortune 500 companies to have achieved year on year growth for over ten years. During Darwin E. Smith’s twenty-year tenure through to the early 1990’s, the stock price increased from $5 to nearly $40. He created a compelling vision to move from paper mills into commodity paper, with brands such as Kleenex and Huggies, and to take on Scott Paper (who they eventually purchased) […]

What we said when the PM came to visit

– Sarah Ramsay, Chief Executive Officer, United Machinists The Prime Minister was so disappointed she couldn’t make United’s Hawaiian launch party, she dropped in for a visit a couple of weeks later with her own party of some 30 media, entourage and diplomatic police. We can confirm it isn’t an act – Jacinda Ardern in person is the real-deal, a people person that puts you at ease immediately and is genuinely interested. Thoughtful, curious and obviously read up before her visit, she was eager to discuss the operations of our workshop and our views on the contract manufacturing industry: How difficult is it to find skilled staff? What can be done to help push apprenticeships? What can schools be doing to draw attention to careers in engineering? Why is it important for NZ to retain manufacturing? What can the government do to help push this? We told her our vision was to bring sexy back into manufacturing – she had a good laugh at that. We told her that now is the time for a renaissance of hi-tech manufacturing in New Zealand. The time to redefine what manufacturing looks like. That it’s not a dirty old mill or lathe, with ‘you’ll get it when its good and ready’ service. It’s the ‘Machine Shop of the Future’ – a state of the art, temperature-controlled facility making highly intricate parts for industries such as medical, cinematography, marine and aerospace. Utilising the very latest in CNC, robotic and software technology available. But that investments into machine capacity will come to nought, if we don’t have the highly skilled people to run them. Of the seven qualified CNC machinists we have hired in the past 18 months, six have been from overseas. “Go hard & Go Early” – a motto often used by Prime […]

Filtration face off: Melt-blown fibres versus electrospun nanofibres

New research into the effectiveness of melt-blown fibres and electrospun nanofibres has found nanofibre filter media provides significantly increased protection against bacteria and viruses such as Covid-19. The research, conducted by Dr Fabrice Karabulut from Revolution Fibres in New Zealand, contrasts and compares nanofibre filtration with traditional melt blown filters in light of increased global demand for PPE and the future need for more effective face masks. Dr Karabulut says melt blowing, a commercially successful and low-cost process for producing filtration microfibres, produces fibres with diameters in the range of 1-10 micrometres. “The structure of a melt-blown filter is like a non-uniform fishing net. Its pores are 1-3 micrometres in diameter which are much larger than bacteria and viruses which are just 0.1 micrometres.” He says the diameters of nanofibre range from 10 – 300 nanometres, which is 10 – 100 times smaller than conventional melt-blown microfibres, meaning they are very effective in protecting against viruses such as COVID, bacteria and other toxic particles. “Electrospun nanofibre is characterised by a very large surface area and small pore diameter which significantly increases the probability of particles in the smaller, submicron and nanometre range depositing on the fibre surface – thereby improving filter efficiency.” Increased breathability and reusable Dr Karabulut’s research is contained in the White Paper Melt-Blown Fibres vs. Electrospun Nanofibres as Filtration Media which outlines the differences between nanofibre filtration capability and melt-blown filtration. As well as increased filtration performance, he also found the breathability and reusable nature of nanofibre made it superior to melt-blown filtration. “The current pandemic has amplified the need for masks to be reusable but retain effectiveness,” he says. “A recent study testing the reusability of melt-blown and nanofibre filters when cleaned with ethanol showed melt-blown filters were only effective for single use due to the […]

Can we grow our future leaders?

Ian Walsh, Managing Director, Intent Group New Zealand’s fall from grace in the OECD rankings over the past 50 years, and our poor productivity overall, is underpinned by factors such as our geographic location and lack of investment in research and development. The primary reasons though, are our poor performance and second level leadership, with studies exposing our lag in this regard. Kiwis work in a unique commercial situation in that 90% of our businesses are SME’s, typically with less than 50 people employed. In this environment, the ability of businesses to invest in talent development, provide mentoring and to create a culture of excellence, is limited. Many business owners and managers need training themselves to develop their skills in finance, business planning and suchlike. In an environment where they are building a business, developing new products or services, employing people, managing finances and capital plans, there is limited ability and understanding to grow the human capital as well. It’s a day to day struggle just to remain afloat, and even more so since Covid-19 hit our shores. In such an environment, every hire is a big decision. It is a serious commitment. So, when confronted with graduates, businesses are naturally uncertain, recognising that it will be some time before their investment pays off and aware that the employee may soon head off on an OE. All of these considerations make it tough for graduates to get jobs, and create problems for the entire system, with people rightly questioning the value of a university degree. Many large companies have stated publicly that a degree is not required for a great number of roles. The reality is that if you can demonstrate you can do the job without the degree, then your experience becomes more valuable than the piece of paper […]

Revolution Fibres skincare product sells out in South Korea

A natural New Zealand skincare product has sold out in online sales after just two hours on South Korea’s most influential home shopping network. The manufacturer of the skincare product, Auckland-based nanofibre producer Revolution Fibres, has now switched its production capacity to face masks to meet COVID-19 demand and to increase the local supply of critical Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Ray Connor, Revolution Fibres CEO, says while the South Korea campaign was successful, following the COVID-19 announcements Revolution Fibres priority switched to manufacturing filter media for N95 face masks. “Filtration for respiratory protection from pollution and viruses is what Revolution Fibres made its name on 10 years ago. We have the expertise and we are increasing our capacity to fulfil large scale orders for face masks which are increasingly in demand.” With AcitvLayr now sold out in South Korea, Revolution Fibres will ramp up production of the skincare product once the lockdown is finished in New Zealand alongside the continued manufacture of filter media for face masks. ActivLayr is made from premium marine collagen and was developed through an intensive research and development programme over several years, with funding support from the Seafood Innovations Ltd and in collaboration with Sanford and Plant & Food Research. ActivLayr was advertised on influential South Korean home shopping channels GS and Lotte across two hour-long segments showcasing the skincare product to tens of millions of consumers. The advertising campaigns for ActivLayr focussed on the premium Tier 1 marine collagen combined with hyaluronic acid (an ingredient to help the skin retain moisture) to deliver an advanced cosmetic application. The ActivLayr technology is a versatile platform and has been shown to effectively and efficiently deliver a broad range of active ingredients directly into the intradermal and subdermal regions of the skin. Iain Hosie, Revolution Fibres […]

Kiwi businesses need to feel the love

Almost 1000 New Zealand-owned and operated businesses have signed on to the ShopKiwi campaign, which today launched a new website. With Kiwi manufacturers reopening safely, the ShopKiwi website has provided them with an avenue to sell products directly to consumers online. These businesses have stock ready to leave their doors under Alert Level 2. ShopKiwi manager Dane Ambler says now is the time for New Zealanders to act on calls to support locally owned and operated companies as they start to reopen. “Without support, some of these businesses simply will not make it through the Covid-19 fallout. Buying from these businesses will keep the economy rolling and most importantly keep Kiwis in jobs while employment ticks towards record highs. “As the wage subsidy comes to an end, the most important thing for these businesses will be getting money into the till from customers. “A recent survey of more than 1300 Kiwis indicated they are more likely to shop locally once the lockdown is lifted, now is the time to translate that thought into action.”

Housing construction is becoming manufacturing

Manufacturing is usually associated with making parts and assembling them. Manufacturing complete houses is a relative new concept in the history of the industrial revolution. We are on the verge of the next step, making the complete structure for a house out of only one material, foam concrete. Recent developments have made it possible to make foam concrete to high specifications, good thermal and acoustic insulating properties and reasonable strength compared to “normal” concrete. We are talking here about foam concrete that is half the weight and has more than five times the thermal insulation factor. On top of that it is more flexible, so it can withstand earthquakes better. If you are in a war zone it can protect you from flying objects, as it has a high energy absorption rate. All this creates a comfortable, healthy and safe home for a reasonable cost.Aaldert So why is everyone not using it? Mainly because the mortar mixes do have a few more ingredients in it, and the ratios of the components are critical, in addition you need a foam making machine to make the foam, and then mix it in with the mortar. All of this together puts people off using it as it is more complex than making “normal” mortar. In a factory environment it is easier to control the production process, including the curing. As with all concretes the “drying” time and conditions have an influence on the end result, the final strength and flexibility. On-site it can be difficult and costly to maintain the ideal conditions, keeping it wet and at the ideal temperature. Manufacturing foam concrete products in a special designed facility has many benefits, good control over the delivery and storage of the raw materials, use and maintenance of the equipment, labour input, less skilled […]

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