Innovation leads growth

A passion for design and a desire to sell his products overseas has seen Bruce Ennis rise through the ranks to led Page Macrae Engineering's exporting charge.

His success at designing, manufacturing and selling cargo handling equipment both in New Zealand and overseas has helped the Mount Maunganui company move from a service base to a manufacturing base.

Mr Ennis' contributions to the company and the region were recently recognised at the BNZ Bay of Plenty ExportNZ Awards where he was awarded the Export Achievement Award.

The award was a surprise and an honour but reflected his passion for exporting, Ennis said.

"I don't talk about it a lot but I really like to see our products overseas, and it's really satisfying to be able to sell stuff into the Australian market, and others."

Ennis joined the company in 1991 as a fitter in the shipping department.

In those days ship repairs were a big part of Page Macrae's workload but the work slowly dried up throughout the 90s as ships started carrying their own engineering teams.

Mr Ennis was promoted to supervisor in the stevedoring section of the department and it was there he designed his first product for the company - a revolutionary log lifter.

His first design was made out of bits of cardboard; this was followed by a thin sheet metal model before the full 450kg prototype was made.

Mr Ennis' log lifter was a simpler, safer and cheaper product than those used at the time and Page Macrae has gone on to sell over 300 of them.

"The first one we made is still running," he said, "It's just as productive as the last one we made."

Mr Ennis was promoted to manager of the cargo handling equipment department and led the design of bulk grabs and hoppers.

"I'm shifting into a focus of trying to package some of the products together a bit more and also solve problems for our clients.

"One of the biggest problems our clients have that I can see when I go around to visit them is dust.

"It's not a great look, you go to a wharf and it's just littered with product all across it and the ocean's right next to it and it's going to go in there, so we've been looking for some time at solving some of those problems and we've got really good products in that area."

The 41-tonne dust controlled hoppers designed by Page Macrae were a step ahead of anything else on the market, Mr Ennis said, and his department was kept busy working over the Christmas/New Years period making four for Australian construction materials giant Boral.

Page Macrae ships the hoppers fully made but is considering the possibility of manufacturing them overseas to negate the shipping costs.

The company's reputation for quality products and service had created significant growth in the past two years and the future was looking bright, Mr Ennis said.