Fisher & Paykel Appliances topped the TIN 100 list with revenues of $1.4 billion last year. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey Expand

Fisher & Paykel Appliances topped the TIN 100 list with revenues of $1.4 billion last year. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

If there is anywhere New Zealand can look to improve its economic performance - without the limitations of land, rainfall or carbon emissions - it's technology.

According to Technology Investment Network's annual survey of the sector, technology exports last year brought in $5.1 billion, putting it ahead of meat, wood, wool and wine, with only dairy products earning more for the country.

Not that the year has been easy. Revenue growth halved to 2 per cent, and the publicly listed companies among the top 100 had an average net profit before tax of only 1 per cent. Over 900 jobs were lost, 4 per cent of the total.

Rising debt was a cause for concern for many companies, and the largest company in the list, Fisher & Paykel Appliances, brought in Chinese manufacturer Haier as a cornerstone shareholder.

Electronic payments technology provider Provenco Cadmus fell over, and companies exposed to the consumer market took big hits, including Fisher & Paykel Appliances, Rakon, Irwin and Navico.

TIN managing director Greg Shanahan says New Zealand has a natural advantage in technology, because solutions are developed by small multidisciplinary teams, who are not bound by conventional wisdom.

What comes out of an action-oriented, intuitive approach are often solutions that are lower-cost and more innovative than those that can be developed elsewhere with a much greater spend.

In the past, many of these products failed the test of commercial success, but Shanahan says as the world becomes a smaller place a growing number of "Kiwi innovations" are reaching global markets in a way not before possible.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances again topped the TIN 100, with 2009 revenues of $1.37 billion. Fisher & Paykel Healthcare came in at number three, with $458 million.

Between them came firm Datacom at $609 million, illustrating the importance of IT services to New Zealand's prospects.

Fourth largest was NDA Group, whose $265 million business fabricating stainless steel is an offshoot of the dairy industry.

Making the top five by guestimate was Weta, Wingnut and related companies associated with Peter Jackson's Wellywood, which probably brought in around $200 million by doing digital and special effects for the motion picture industry.

The last of the 100 was banking software company Finzsoft, with $7.5 million in revenue, and Shanahan includes another 50 companies hovering below that point that could conceivably make the leap over the next year.