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Larry Ellison's BMW Oracle team is poised to move its main boat building operations from Washington to Warkworth and plans to set up a high-tech hub with the potential to design composite materials used in aeroplanes, wind turbines and eco-friendly homes.
Tim Smyth, who heads up Oracle's construction
team alongside fellow Kiwi Mark Turner, said the company had been considering moving operations down to New Zealand since the pair joined Oracle in 2000.
"It's been quite a saga. We initially were into it when Chris Dickson was on board. It's long been an ambition of mine since I joined Oracle in 2000. Being New Zealanders we wanted to live there."
Smyth, who originally comes from Nelson but has a house in Rodney's Matakana, said initially they looked for a greenfields site in Rodney before someone suggested the old Rodney Times printing presses in Warkworth.
"It's an ideal building, being a printing shop it had plenty of electricity and a lot of space, it was well-suited for what we do."
The company bought the 5300sq m building in early 2008 and has spent the last year refurbishing the office space.
"It had been unoccupied for a while so it needed extensive work."
The main hall where the boat building will take place has yet to have any work done but Smyth says they are hoping to have that ready in time to bring some of the operations down by mid-year.
The team will still keep its operations going in Washington as under the America's Cup rules part of the boat has to be completed in the country the team represents.
Smyth said under his present US visa conditions he was only allowed to build boats associated with America's Cup racing. But the move to New Zealand would open up the potential for it to expand the business into the broader marine market as well as the high-tech composite industry.
He said some had suggested the business expand into the luxury aircraft market, an area which Air New Zealand already operates in through its Altitude business.
"We are not particularly interested in doing fine woodwork or leather chairs but we would be interested in the composites that connect it to the aircraft."
But one area where he is keen is making wind turbines.
"They are a large product and a significant part of the cost is transport. They need to be built close to the infrastructure. If New Zealand is going to be getting into it in a big way we need to be making them at home," he said.
A third area was for use in infrastructure where composites could be used to retrofit old concrete structures or in building modular style eco-houses.
Smyth said the marine industry was only a small part of the composite market and was considered to be at the low-tech end.
But being based in the US for close to 10 years had brought him into contact with other users of composite materials including aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Smyth said New Zealand had a lot of experienced people in the boat building industry and with composite technology skills but he believed it was currently under-utilised.
Smyth said he had worked in boat building all over the world and in every other country an industry had built up behind it to support the builders.
But New Zealand did not have that back-up industry which meant it was "falling behind in the technology stakes".
Other countries had moved beyond building boats by hand because it was no longer economical and had built machines for high-definition work.
He planned to bring a high-tech milling machine to New Zealand in the next few months.
The Warkworth site would have the potential to employ about 60 people although numbers would fluctuate.
Rodney Economic Development Trust's Mike Smith said the BMW Oracle situation was an unusual case as often manufacturers wanted to be located in South Auckland.
"We are very lucky to get a company like that coming to New Zealand. It is the type of industry that New Zealand needs."
Joining up
* Composite materials involve combining two or more materials with different properties together in a way which means they remain distinct close up.
* Plywood is a very well-known composite. Other common uses are in cement or asphalt concrete
* Composites are commonly used, such as fibreglass in showers or bathtubs
* One of the most advanced forms of composite use is in spacecraft where materials are melded together to withstand extreme conditions.
