Driving a high-tech advantage globally

Ross Green, managing director of Wellington Drive Technologies, on the shop floor in Auckland. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Selling cutting edge technology often requires futuristic design but NZX-listed Wellington Drive Technologies found the opposite applied.

Managing director Ross Green said the company's highly efficient electronic motors had to be disguised as their low-tech cousins to help break into a global market worth about US$20 billion ($29 billion).

"What we found out was that we needed to make it really easy for customers to adopt and we needed to not shock them at all," he said. "So we actually changed the appearance of our products such that they did look much more like conventional ones and in fact used more metal than we needed to use."

Side by side it's hard to tell them apart.

The motors - used in products such as refrigerators, ventilation and air conditioning - may cost up to three times more but cut the weight by up to threequarters and use about a third the electricity, Green said.

The products can pay for themselves in less than six months, he added.

In 2005, the Auckland-based company brought out a high-end conventional motor, now accounting for about 30 per cent of sales value, to give customers more confidence to sign up and migrate over.

Wellington Drive has a design and manufacturing operation in Auckland employing about 60 people, with major work contracted to factories in China and Malaysia, an international sales office in Singapore, limited assembly facilities in Turkey and Britain, and small offices in the US, Italy and the Netherlands.

The firm is to supply 126,000 conventional motors to Turkey. Last year it shipped about 230,000. However, despite revenue more than tripling to $7.1 million in the year to last June, the company lost $4.5 million. "The number one task is to grow the revenues because you can't have large profits without large revenues," said Green.