Regional Manufacturing:Microbrewtech, Oamaru
Simon Ross of Microbrewtech, based in Oamaru, shares with NZ Manufacturer his company’s role in manufacturing beer bottling machines for the craft beer market. Describe your company’s main areas of activity. Microbrewtech manufactures beer bottling machines designed specifically for the craft beer market. A significant gap was identified and we developed a machine to fill the gap. Breweries with capacity up to around 1800 litre batches are considered to be the target market. Microbrewtech has so far only sold into Australia and New Zealand because we are a small company, however there is a large international market and plenty of interest from further afield, even with though our advertising strategy is deliberately being limited trans-tasman. Microbrewtech has limited heavy manufacturing capability and most of our components etc. are outsourced from New Zealand and as far away as Germany. Final assembly, wiring, programming and testing is performed in house. What area(s) of the business are currently being developed? Documentation is constantly improving, as well as programming, streamlining assembly techniques etc. Each time a small issue is encountered an effort is made to improve the design, or process. An Australian dealer has been engaged to allow an increase in manufacturing capacity and sales. Does the company place much emphasis/outlay on R & D? Yes. This company is based on R&D, and is now growing manufacturing, distribution and sales roles. R&D outlay is difficult to quantify, as it began far before the company was formed. For example, I left my former job working for a company designing / manufacturing microlight aircraft and worked for 10 months with no income before selling the first unit and forming the company. Prior to that there had been a couple of prototypes as well. New product development has been put on the back burner at this stage […]