Kinetic raises NZ's profile with steel-cutting machine

Kinetic Engineering Design began life in a garage 1993 designing and making custom-ordered machines.

Six years later, the company now has 90 per cent share of the New Zealand market for profile-cutting machines. The fact that Kinetic Engineering is around has also meant New Zealand has been able to save $3 million in import costs. Profile-cutting machines are used by industries to cut steel or aluminium sheets, among others.

Murray Forlong, 33, started the company when he thought he had had enough of working for others. His brother Bruce later joined him and then Chris Were bought a stake in the company in 1998.

The three bring with them different technical skills to the business - Murray has expertise in robotics engineering, Bruce's specialty is cutting systems while Chris is a software expert.

Kinetic Engineering has seven full-time staff. Two of them have PhDs and altogether, four have tertiary qualifications reflecting the high knowledge content the company is built around.

"When we started, we did contract work - all sorts of work, from packaging to prototype machines. But we decided that to make the business work we had to do more than one-off machines," Bruce Forlong said. They decided they would make profile-cutting machines.

Before Kinetic Engineering's foray into the turf, all such machines had been imported.

Kinetic Engineering's first machine was was a bevel-cutting machine - where cuts made to a steel sheet are on an angle, not square.

Mr Forlong said: "Our competitor told our first potential client that we couldn't do it because they had been trying to do it for 10 years and hadn't managed to succeed."

But Kinetic Engineering completed the feat in good time - 14 weeks. There has been no looking back.

Sales have been fast, nearly doubling every year. But the small New Zealand market is pushing Kinetic Engineering to look offshore.

Profile-cutting machines that have been in the market so far have served different needs. Isolated, they have good qualities, each to be found in different machines.

What Kinetic Engineering did was to incorporate many of the functions into one machine, providing as much automation as possible.

The machines can handle complex and precise tasks such as cutting the skeleton of a bicycle the size of a palm, to large thick or thin steel sheets or other material.

"The technical ability of our machine is higher than what competitors can offer," Mr Forlong said.

To make the machine user-friendly, the control of these tasks is from a touch screen control panel.

The "heart" of Kinetic Engineering's machine is in its panel control, powered by sophisticated computer software designed in-house.

The company has had early success in selling its machine in Australia.

"We took a machine to Australia and sold the machine on the spot to South Australia," Mr Forlong said. More deals were imminent.

Moves are underway to take the product to the United States, the main market for profile-cutting work. Mr Forlong said the New Zealand market could take six profile-cutting machines a year, Kinetic Engineering can make 12 or more. The US has an annual market of 900 machines.

The essence of a good a machine is to be found in how it is designed, how functional and reliable it is. Kinetic Engineering says it has all of these.

One critical problem which Kinetic Engineering has helped clients solve is to prevent surges in the power by working with electrical engineers on the product.

So far, word of mouth had been the company's best selling tool.

Mr Forlong said entrepreneurs had to realise that although they had a good product, it was no use if they could not market the product.

In the past, he had a bit of help from the former Business Development Board (BDB) in trade promotion expenses.


Now, he just works on the premise that there is no Government help for exporters.

"You have to basically work on the idea that you can do it by yourself. But if there is any form of assistance, with export promotion, it would probably help someone like ourselves.

"We will still get there in the end but it [assistance] would make it a shorter journey."

In 1996, Waitakere City gave Kinetic Engineering an innovation award.

The company's profile-cutting machines has gone some ways towards helping Waitakere's boat-building industry where an industrial company uses Kinetic Engineering's machine to cut aluminium sheets used to make boats.

Promotion of Kinetic Engineering's technical feat can help the city develop its marine industry further, one official at Enterprise Waitakere said.

"They are very skilled in what they do and are the only company in New Zealand to do that. Their machines can be used by very sophisticated boat builders and the building and construction industry around the world."

Mr Forlong said the company has been quite lucky in that it has managed to clinch a steady order of jobs since it started.

For now, he was happy that Kinetic Engineering's staff could enjoy a good lifestyle and growth was still robust.