Tauranga company Balex Marine's decision to set a tight deadline to commercialise its Automatic Boat Loader by launching at last weekend's Hutchwilco New Zealand Boat Show has paid off.
The company won the award for Most Innovative Local Product, a new category created to recognise innovation in a marine application, at New Zealand's biggest boating expo.
The company also just learned that it had made the finals of the Page Macrae Engineering Innovation in Exports category of next month's Export New Zealand Bay of Plenty export awards.
"It was beyond our expectations to get the Hutchwilco award at our first product launch," said managing director Paul Symes, who accepted the award with inventor Lex Bacon.
Mr Bacon had been working on the idea in various forms for more than 10 years before entrepreneur Paul Symes invested into the business along with product development company Locus Research at the end of last year. The Automatic Boat Loader uses a powered roller system to automatically launch or recover a boat on to a trailer.