North Carolina, April 2010 - Loadrite is proud to continue their partnership with John Deere by launching the L-Series 2160 Advanced Payload Scale (APS) for Deere K-Series 4WD loaders. Payload scales, from the market leader Loadrite, help to improve productivity through material management and increase customer satisfaction, through the prevention of over/underloading. The new system L-Series 2160 Advanced Payload Scale extends the functionality offered by the loader’s embedded payload scale option.

The APS is developed specifically for Deere and communicates with the loader’s control systems. Its dedicated user interface offers an easy to use icon driven interface and extensive data collection and reporting capabilities. These features are the ideal for changing customer needs driven by current economic conditions.

Nathan Cables (GM of Loadrite in the Americas region) says, “Our customers, whether in aggregates, government, scrap, recycling, or excavation/demolition, have an increasing focus on minimizing overall operating costs, monitoring production and stockpiles, as well as the most efficient utilization of their assets such as loaders. The flexible feature set of the APS allows payload data to be captured through accurate and precise weight information.  This information is a must-have for customers wanting to increase the efficiency of their operations, and drive production costs down.”

The proven support and experience of the nationwide Loadrite distribution network, alongside the renowned reliability and accuracy of Loadrite products, made selecting a partner an easy choice for John Deere.

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Julian Nixon reports that it's New Zealand's commodity producers are not the only exporters enjoying the fruits of China's boom - Kiwi companies selling value-added products are also enjoying success.

Commodity exporters are not the only New Zealand enterprises benefiting from China’s economic boom. Although the 43 percent increase in New Zealand exports to China in the year to December 2009 can largely be attributed to dairy products, meat, wool timber and other commodities, Kiwi companies selling value-added products are also enjoying success.

Business success in China, measured by increasing revenue and profitability, is a relatively new trend for companies operating in niche sectors such as food and beverage, information and communication technology (ICT), agricultural biotechnology and specialised manufacturing.

Of particular note are the inroads being made by specialised manufacturers including Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Teknatool, Actronic Technologies and NDA Engineering.

Fisher & Paykel’s products comprise medical products for use in hospitals and the home including a respiratory humidifier system. Teknatool manufactures electric motors and power tools. Actronic Technologies manufacturers weighing systems for wheel loaders and other heavy machinery used for tasks such as moving coal on and off containers at China’s deep water ports. NDA Engineering designs and fabricates steel vessels and heat exchangers for a range of industries including dairy, wine, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and petro-chemicals.

Pat English, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, Trade Commissioner, Guangzhou, said “China has a population more than 300 times the size of New Zealand’s and an economy that grew 8.7 percent in 2009, but the size of the population and speed of growth doesn’t mean that opportunities sit like low-hanging fruit. China is a tough place to do business.

“To do well, companies must get the basics right. This involves finding a market niche, integrating manufacturing with marketing, sales and training, and developing realistic business plans,” Mr English said.

“New Zealand manufacturers are small by global standards and are wise to identify micro markets that are right for them before committing investment. For example, second-tier cities such as Qingdao, Chengdu and Shenzhen may have advantages over Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou.
“It’s better to ‘under promise and over deliver’ rather than to disappoint big customers in the large metropolitan areas when you can’t meet demand,” he said.

“Also, reliable company representatives who are comfortable working with Chinese need to be based in China. It’s not enough to just rely on business partners and hope that arrangements will work. Operations in China need to be deeply integrated with the market,” Mr English said.
“An integrated, well-connected company that learns from experience will be able to adapt quickly to changes in market conditions,” he said.

“At the end of the day, companies must sell the right products, at the right time, at the right price.”
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Teknatool, Actronic Technologies and NDA Engineering each took different approaches to establishing viable businesses in China.

Fisher & Paykel operates through a sales office in Guangzhou in the south east of China while Actronic Technologies’ products are distributed in China by Mettler Toledo, a Switzerland-based precision-mechanics company.

NDA Engineering, 40 percent owned by the management team, entered China supplying a multinational company but in 2006 acquired a majority share of an existing stainless steel fabrication workshop in Shanghai. After a subsequent capital restructure, NDA acquired 100 percent of its Shanghai operations while manufacturing products from a new purpose-built 8,000 square metre workshop.

Teknatool, which is 100 percent New Zealand owned, bought out its Chinese partner four years ago. The Auckland-based firm has a manufacturing plant in Qingdao in the north east of China and is phasing out low-end manufacturing in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions views Teknatool’s move as bad news for New Zealand workers if jobs are lost, but Teknatool Managing Director, Roger Latimer, said “manufacturing in China makes business sense because it enables the company to be closer to customers, achieve economies of scale and be more competitive.

Mr Latimer said “Teknatool’s focus in New Zealand will be on high-value activities such as research and development (R&D) and design and in this way the company will contribute to the development of a knowledge economy in New Zealand centered around innovation and technology.”

Fisher & Paykel also undertakes R&D, design and high-end manufacturing in New Zealand.

However, Fisher & Paykel, which is listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and employs 2,200 people, has no plans to establish a manufacturing plant in China. Instead, the company is building a plant in Mexico on the doorstep of its largest market, the United States.

Fisher & Paykel Chief Executive Officer, Michael Daniell (pictured left, with Zhiping Hou, General Manager in China) said “revenue from China is approaching one percent of the company’s total revenue, but we will continue using regional distributors supported by our Guangzhou office. This is what works for us.”

The company reported a 31 percent rise in net profit to $37 million for the half year to September 2009, on the back of strong revenue growth in the obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) product group, continuing strong demand for respiratory products and favourable results from foreign exchange hedging arrangements.

Asked what advice they would give to New Zealand companies considering the viability of conducting business in China, spokespeople for the four specialised manufacturers said “there is no time like the present.”

NDA, Teknatool and Actronic spokespeople said in hindsight they were “too cautious” about investing in China and could have moved “more quickly”. But at the time, what they were doing was considered “risky”.

NZTE’s Mr English said “a window of opportunity exists for New Zealand companies to move into or expand their presence in China because it’s only a matter of time before tariff reductions under New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement with China become available to other countries.

NDA Engineering, Chief Executive Officer, Mark Eglinton, said “NDA’s focus was global rather than just on China but the market was becoming significant for the company with almost ten percent of revenue generated there.

“Most of our clients in China are multinational companies but we also have Chinese clients,” Mr Eglinton said.

“In China, protection of intellectual property rights is a major issue and for this reason we are reluctant to include our full IP in China operations,” he said.

“There are costs involved in preventing people from ‘going to school’ on our technology and using that knowledge to create competing products,” he said.

“Protecting IP is a responsibility of everyone in the company.

“Another challenge is to implement training courses to ensure that staff in China have the knowledge, skills and motivation to work efficiently and effectively. Clear lines of communication must be established and this can be difficult to achieve with people who instinctively understand that knowledge is power.”

Actronic Chief Executive Officer Mark Templeton (pictured) said “it is important to learn how to act in a culture that's quite different from our own. In China, building business relationships requires more than just getting on with people. It requires empathy. Successful business relationships in China are underpinned by mutual obligation rather than contractual arrangements.

“Actronic, which generates about five percent of revenue in China, had an issue where a customer had damaged a wheel loader. Actronic was not liable to fix the loader but agreed to contribute to its repair in the interests of maintaining a good relationship with a Chinese business partner,” Mr Templeton said.

“In a situation like this, it’s not about liability, it’s about relationship building, long-term commitment and ‘win-win’ results. We had to learn this in China,” he said.

- By Julian Nixon
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Auckland weighing-technology company Actronic Technologies has become an exporting heavyweight since two “can-do” engineers launched it over 30 years ago.

In 1979 engineers Doug Rankin and Bob Allison developed a weighing system for wheel loaders, which became the firm’s founding product. Actronic now has $20 million annual turnover.

Chief executive Mark Templeton says it supplies hydraulic weighing systems for wheel loaders, excavators, garbage trucks and other loading equipment.

“If you’re loading trucks up to go on the road, you want to make sure you’re not overloading them because of the potential for fines. It’s a cost-efficiency consideration as well. Overloaded vehicles use more fuel per tonne, use tyres up more quickly and there’s more wear and tear.”

The firm has also developed software to allow companies using different equipment to load bulk materials to gain an overview of the loading process, manage their inventory, track products and identify bottlenecks. “In the current environment with the demand being variable for their end product, especially in the aggregate and construction sector, you need to be much more concerned about the cost per tonne of material you are producing and how effectively you’re using machinery and labour.”

Actronic’s customers include major global aggregate and cement companies HeidelbergCement, Lafarge and Cemex, and in New Zealand Stephensons and Winstone.

In the United States the firm has made inroads in the municipal market with a product that lets city authorities weigh and manage salt stockpiles used to clear roads of ice.

In China its products are used in coal mines, and Actronic is looking to push into the construction and dairy sector markets.

China is establishing large corporatised dairy farms with large herds of cows, which will be fed mixed feed in feedlots. “They’ll be needing to weigh accurately the different components [of the feed].”

Meanwhile India’s plans to improve its infrastructure will create an opportunity for Actronic to cash in, he says. “India is creaking at the seams… they need good roading and good railways and that means more aggregate and more cement.”

The potential in the two rapidly developing giants is significant, but it will be sometime before it is fully realised, Mr Templeton says. “It’s probably a 10-year exercise… it takes much longer to build relationships and to get your business established in these markets and at this stage they’re not using advanced technology, they’re still very much at a basic level.”

Actronic Technologies has 60 employees, 48 based in Auckland.

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Gottfried Pausch, formerly Managing Director at Siemens New Zealand Ltd, has been appointed as an independent director to the board of Auckland-based technology company, Actronic.

Gottfried started his career with Siemens AG, Germany in 1986 as a commissioning and design engineer for automation systems in the mines and metal industry. Gottfried has since gained experience managing multi-million dollar projects in the Middle East and executive management roles internationally, across a number of industries including; energy, telecommunications, IT and professional services.

In 2003 Gottfried relocated to New Zealand to become CEO of Siemens Energy Services and was later promoted to Managing Director of the Siemens New Zealand operation, leading a team of over 300. Gottfried is currently consulting as an Executive in Residence for the Icehouse business growth centre.

Gottfried holds a degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from Duke University in North Carolina. He brings to Actronic more than 20 years experience within engineering and executive management roles in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.

“We have been searching for a director to strengthen our board in the areas of international sales and marketing and Gottfried will add significant value, particularly in global business strategy formulation” Actronic Chairman Keith Oliver said.

“Having gained considerable experience in many of our key markets, Gottfried brings the mix of management skills and international perspective we have been looking for, along with additional expertise in management development. We are delighted to announce Gottfried’s appointment; he possesses a rare combination of strategic insight coupled with practical execution, market and customer orientation, team focus and performance management.” « Back

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In 2006, Actronic Technologies started a project with the University of Auckland in New Zealand to reduce the environmental impacts of its Loadrite onboard weighing systems. As quarries often install weighing systems to improve productivity, a sub-project was set up to compare the environmental impacts of the products themselves to the savings achieved by using them.

For a New Zealand quarry that uses Loadrite weighing systems to optimise road truck loading, it was estimated that 700,000 MJ of non-renewable energy consumption and 52 tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions were avoided for each loader that had a weighing system installed. The potential impacts caused by manufacturing, distributing, using and disposing of that same weighing system were 144 and 154 times smaller respectively.

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Mark Templeton keeps three words top of mind when his company is dealing with its Chinese clients: relationships are paramount. It’s advice from the Chinese partner which has successfully guided Templeton’s company, Actronic, through the cultural intricacies of doing business the Chinese way.
 
Avondale-based Actronic makes electronic weighing systems for use in rugged environments. Three years ago, the company opened an office in Shanghai, near its partner, the Chinese subsidiary of multinational precision measurement company Mettler Toledo. The multinational provides Actronic’s Loadrite products to Chinese port companies, which use them to measure coal and iron ore onto rail wagons.
 
When a port company suggested that Actronic was to blame for an electrical fault on a wheel loader, Templeton’s first reaction was to loudly object. He knew from the machine’s diagnostics that it was not at fault. However, Mettler Toledo advised him to swallow his objections, and forked out for one-third of the maintenance cost itself.
 
“If we’d been in the US or Europe we’d have protested vigorously, because of the risk of litigation against us,” says Templeton. “But Mettler Toledo told us that, in China, taking your share of the burden was a demonstration of your commitment to the relationship.”
 
Last year, Actronic turned over $23 million, 95% of which was generated from exports to 40 countries. Templeton says Chinese government-owned companies, such as port and rail, are yet to truly embrace commercialism. When they do, Actronic wants to be at the top of their list, but there’s still work to be done. “Until you’ve established a level of trust, it doesn’t matter how good the value proposition or brand is.”
 
Templeton reckons setting up business in China is at least a five-year project, due to the size and segmentation of the market. “You can’t measure your progress from month to month, or even year to year, so all the more effort is needed to understand the cultural differences and situations.”
 
That point is illustrated by the situation Actronic discovered when it sent a local technician to fix a problem in a remote mine. The technician found he hadn’t taken the right tools, and had to go to the nearest supply outlet, buy them, and then go back and fix the problem.
 
“We said, come on, surely he should have brought the right tools to the job. But Mettler Toledo told us he would probably have travelled several hours by bus and then maybe ridden a scooter to the site,” says Templeton. “There isn’t regular transport, and he couldn’t be carrying every tool he thought he needed.”
 
Now Actronic has a selection of tools at suppliers dotted around the countryside – to the technicians’ relief.
 
Another near faux-pas could have been the end of the company’s relationship with Mettler Toledo. For the first few years of their contract (and before Templeton’s time), Actronic supplied Mettler Toledo from New Zealand, preferring to provide remote support and regular market visits before setting up overseas. The Chinese subsidiary finally questioned how committed the Kiwis were to the partnership because there was no office in China. Actronic immediately set up a Shanghai base, installed a software designer and agreed to work exclusively with Mettler Toledo.
Actronic has already made a deep impression on the board, says David Mahon, chair of the China Advisory Board for the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise Beachheads.
 
“Actronic was the first company to be formally accepted into NZTE’s China Beachhead programme, and it has already established its own beachhead here with a local distributor and a representative office. That level of commitment is an important part of being in the programme.”
 
By Christine Nikiel
 
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Jeffrey Lamb, the New York-based senior business development manager of NZTE's Americas Beachhead programme, said the conference tomorrow and Friday aimed to help Kiwi businesses succeed in the US.

"The overall goals of this event are to provide an opportunity and occasion for the heads of New Zealand Beachheads companies - and a handful of other companies who may be considering the value of the Beachheads programme - to meet with the majority of our advisers and other experts as well as with each other.

"We have found that there is great value in group meetings and leaders of New Zealand companies networking with each other to share ideas, experiences and sometimes resources. The agenda has been carefully designed to create immediate strategic and tactical value for the New Zealand companies.

"This is the second time we have held this event and fully intend for it to be annual," Lamb said from New York. Representatives from more than 35 companies would be attending.

Peter Bull, NZ Trade and Enterprise's American director, and Greg Cross, global chairman of the Beachheads advisory board, will speak at the conference at Le Meridien Hotel.

Bridget Liddell will host a session on how North American Beachhead advisers can be of value to New Zealand companies. The conference will also examine capital raising, public relations, marketing and recruitment.

Companies represented at the conference include: Glidepath, which has supplied baggage handling systems to the North American aviation industry for more than 20 years; Wellington Drive Technologies, one of the world's leading suppliers of energy-saving motors for the refrigeration, ventilation and appliance industries; Actronic Technologies, an Avondale-headquartered business which has developed a mobile weighing system which it exports to many countries; and TimeZoneOne, a brand development and graphic design business which specialises in offering speed, creative and cost advantages to its clients. 

By Anne Gibson

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Actronic Technologies, the Avondale headquartered mobile electronics weighing company has become the first New Zealand business to be accepted into the new China Beachheads programme run by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

Beachheads assists and speeds entry and growth of New Zealand companies into overseas markets and the China Beachheads advisory board is the newest and seventh to be established by NZTE. This year’s Budget voted $8 million to NZTE’s programmes targeting China, India and Southeast Asia.

Actronic has offices in Auckland, Shanghai, Australia, the Netherlands and North Carolina in the United States but it regards China and India as significant growth areas.

Mark Templeton, Actronic chief executive said the business had already used Beachheads in North America but three years ago the company moved into China. It has now developed a weighing system with Mandarin language displays which is being trialled with customers. The first order arrived on Thursday.

Actronic’s equipment is assembled in Auckland from imported parts. The business started 30 years ago in founder Doug Rankin’s garden shed behind his Glendowie house.

“He tells us he had to move the lawn mower to get going,” Templeton said.

In 2005 the company established a distribution partnership deal with Swiss-headquartered multinational measurement business Mettler Toledo in Shanghai. Templeton said this had been a huge help.

“Mettler have coverage in China we could never emulate in terms of regional sales and technical support for their products. In China you have to look at the country regionally, both economically and politically, to really have business infrastructure that works.

 “Mettler distributes and markets our products and we have Kevin Lai in our Shanghai office. He has worked at Actronic in Auckland and grew up in New Zealand but his family came from China. He works with Mettler around key marketing and sales opportunities,” Templeton said.

“Since we’ve put him in place the relationship with Mettler has strengthened considerably because even if you have the right partner, it’s very hard to understand the local market. It’s made a huge difference in being able to work with Mettler.”

China generates less than 2.5 percent of Actronic’s revenue but he said the potential for the company’s products to be sold in China is huge, particularly to enforce bans on railway overloading. Templeton said Actronic had $23 million annual turnover, 95 percent generated from its exports to 40 countries.

China also offered big waste and recycling opportunities, with Actronic able to measure waste going into landfills or being recycled.

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Dr Weathersby is Chairman and CEO of Genesys Solutions and a director of Holcim (NYSE), AOI Medical (LSE) and Bostwick Laboratories (pre-IPO). He was President, CEO, and Director of ERSI (NASDAQ) and Curtis Publishing (PHX).
Dr Weathersby is also past President of the American Management Assoc (AMA), and was formerly an associate Professor of Management at Harvard, and Associate Director of Planning and lecturer in Business at the University of California.

Actronic was introduced to Dr Weathersby through New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s USA Beachhead’s programme.

“We are delighted to have attracted a USA based director with such a range of experience and contacts,” Actronic Chairman Keith Oliver said. “As a New Zealand-owned company we are aware of the value of having Dr Weathersby’s US and international perspective represented on our board.

“His extensive academic background, his experience with assisting major US organisations improve strategy execution, and his involvement in hi-tech companies will be of tremendous value to a company like ours that is continually developing and refining products for global markets.”

Mr Oliver said the appointment of Dr Weathersby was the latest benefit of Actronic’s participation in Beachheads in the USA.

“We really appreciate the assistance we have received from Beachheads in the US. As the first company appointed to Beachheads China, we hope to gain a similar market advantage from the programme as we grow our business there.”

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Las Vegas, NV - At CONEXPO-CON / AGG 08, Actronic Technologies, manufacturers of LOADRITE^® onboard weighing solutions for wheel loaders, announced the release of their new LOADRITE^® X-Weigh 2350™ weighing system for the global excavator market. The new LOADRITE^® X-Weigh 2350™ system increases productivity and provides a rapid return on investment by ensuring all trucks loaded to their full legal capacity. There is no time lost through reweighing, no lost inventory through overloading and no fines due to overweight trucks. Billing is accurate easy and verifiable.Read more « Back

EXPORT CASE STUDY THE ACTRONIC STORY
Having engineered its way into a leading global role in its niche market, Auckland based Actronic is now busy redesigning its own mindset. Why does the company no longer just see itself as a Kiwi exporter and what is its recipe for growth? Vicky Jane reports.
Actronic has already made the grade as a successful Kiwi exporter.  Its hydraulic weighing equipment is a market leader in major overseas markets; around 95 percent of its income is derived offshore and in the past four years its annual revenue has doubled to $20 million.

Now in its 30th year, the company is deliberately designing itself for a whole new level of expansion.  Buying back the rights to distribute one of its major products, Loadrite, three years ago started its shift from primarily a manufacturing / engineering design house to a company with global reach to end consumers.  "I guess the company had come to a crossroads," says CEO Mark Templeton.  "We had new investors on board; there was a feeling the company could become truly global and notch up some pretty impressive growth." That meant getting a better grip on where markets were heading, out-thinking competitive forces, building a better sense of connectedness with end customer needs and strengthening distibution channel partnerships.  "To grow we had to be able to expand not only geographically but extend our product range and move into new market segments."

"The way we think about it is that we are basically a global business and we need to organise our value and supply chains to best serve end customers.  In some cases that might mean shifting some manufacturing offshore or it may mean having technical support for products closer to the market.  We need to move past the mindset of being exporters who just export product from New Zealand."

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What is it with garden sheds? Put a good keen Kiwi in one, and they have an uncanny habit of coming up with a successful business while tinkering away in the dark and musty confines.

So it was with Doug Rankin. Back in 1977, the former Broadcasting Corporation engineer began banging about in his garden shed producing industrial electronics products. It was in the days of protectionism, when we had to find our own solutions because we couldn’t buy them in, and his first project involved making a cycle timer for a friend’s injection moulding company. He called the backyard business Actronic, not just for the obvious link to the word ‘electronic’, says the company’s chief technology officer Paul Corder, but also because the A would put it up front in the Yellow Pages. Practical sorts, these Kiwi blokes.

Rankin was joined in the business by his former Broadcasting Corporation colleague Bob Allison, and Actronic soon forged a reputation as a little company that could solve problems.

Almost 30 years on, the garden shed’s still around (at Doug’s brother’s place, Corder reports) but Actronic has clearly outgrown it. Actronic is now a multimillion-dollar business that employs about 76 staff and gets 95% of its business from offshore. Rankin and Allison remain on the company’s board and are still among its shareholders, says Actronic CEO Mark Templeton, but the company’s largest shareholder is now Lionel Rogers, one of the original funders of Navman.

The company is a world leader in supplying mobile weighing and measuring equipment for rugged environments, such as the quarrying and mining industries. Marketed under the brand Loadrite, the company’s core product has essentially been a weighing solution that attaches to a wheel loader, allowing material to be accurately weighed as it’s loaded onto trucks. This helps avoid inefficiency through under loading, or fines through overloading.

Under another brand, Logrite, the company also produces electronic controllers for forestry harvesting equipment, which are marketed by Tokoroa-based Waratah Forestry Attachments.

But back to that garden shed. Over the years, Actronic developed a huge range of industrial products, including everything from instrumentation on early America’s Cup boats, to medical equipment, to a good deal of industrial weighing equipment.

But ironically, when the company first developed the wheel loader scale it wasn’t seen as a major source of future business. So in 1979, its worldwide distribution rights “were negotiated, given away just about”, says Templeton, to a company in Tauranga, which became known as Loadrite Ltd.

There was a growing realisation, however, that Loadrite was where Actronic’s future lay and that the company needed to get closer to distributors and end customers if it was to grow, says Templeton. So in 2004 Actronic finally bought the Loadrite distribution rights back.

“You’ve got a company that’s 30 years old and for 27 of those years was really a traditional New Zealand manufacturing/exporting, manufacturing/design house,” he says. “But in the last three years it has transformed itself — or is in the process of transforming itself — into an international marketing company that designs products to meet end-user requirements.”

And transform it has, by setting off on an ambitious growth path. In the past four years the company has doubled revenue, which is now just under $20 million, and plans to be a $50 million company by 2011 and turn over $100 million by 2015. The Loadrite business has been growing at about 20% annually and Templeton reckons ramping that up to about 25%, along with a few well-planned acquisitions, will enable Actronic to reach the $50 million target.

Dealing directly with distributors has boosted margins and revenue. It’s also helped the company consolidate and strengthen the distributor network that Templeton says has been a key to Loadrite’s success.

The company’s direct competitors are generally regionally focused Europe-based companies that rely on sales agents. But Loadrite’s distributors not only sell the product, but install, service and support it as well. “It means they have very strong relationships with their local customers,” he says. “That gives us an edge, and in the case of North America it’s probably the reason why we’re the dominant player in that market.”

Jim Gondor, owner of US-based K&R Weighing Systems, was Loadrite’s number-one distributor in terms of sales volume last year and has seen an improvement since dealing directly with Actronic.

“They see the value of the distributorship that they’ve built and that’s what’s important to us — that they see our value and we maintain good value for them,” Gondor says.

Future growth is being driven on three fronts and the first is developing new products. The company has redefined its core business, says Templeton, and now pitches itself as a provider of “productivity solutions for difficult environments”.

The traditional Loadrite product clearly sits within that frame. But Actronic has also invested heavily in developing new products — -particularly advanced, communications-based productivity tools — which are now coming out the pipeline (and, for now, marketed under the Loadrite banner). One such tool currently under trial in the US and due for release in August, for example, is able to combine weighing information from several loaders with information about trucks coming on to a site, so a quarry can monitor the overall efficiency and movement of materials through the site. Says Actronic chief technology officer Paul Corder: “The Loadrite product has always been about productivity. It’s just stretching that further and further, and picking up all the opportunities we can.”

Secondly, the company is expanding its geographic markets. The company has 55 distributors in more than 30 markets and is investing heavily in in-market support. The US is the company’s biggest market, accounting for 55% of revenue, and last year it opened a US office through New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s Beachheads programme. Templeton says the prime value of being involved with the Beachheads has been networking, and building relationships with those active in the company’s field — or related fields — in the US market.

The company also plans to open an office in China (where it has a partnership with multinational weighing company Mettler Toledo) in June and the Netherlands in July. South Africa and China, says Templeton, are the company’s fastest growing markets.

Developing new industry sectors is the third area of growth. The company has previously concentrated on mining and quarrying, but is increasingly exploring opportunities in other rugged environments, including the forestry and waste industries.

About 18 months ago, amidst so much strategic change, the company also went through a Better by Design audit, a process which evaluates every aspect of the business from a design perspective. Corder says the audit has had a broad impact, from helping increase product design focus on end-user requirements and usability, to introducing strategic design advisors who contribute to the business on an ongoing basis.

The company has outgrown its Penrose base and is about to move into new premises in Avondale, where design has also been carefully considered.

Unlike its former “rabbit warren” offices, says Corder, the new premises will be open plan to encourage the free flow of communication. There will be dedicated product display spaces, a cafeteria, and whiz-bang technology, such as screens linked to webcams in offshore offices. In a company with an increasing global spread, it’s hoped they’ll help keep everyone in the loop while scattered around the globe.

Now that’s something you won’t see in a garden shed.

By Caitlin Sykes

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