Company achieves export success with a sitdown job

A Wellington company with the best seat in the house is enjoying the busiest time of its life.

Effuzi International, which specialises in the design and manufacture of mass seating, has exports of $3 million this year and will install more than 60,000 seats in New Zealand before Christmas.

A low dollar and the increased business on the home front has seen 12-year-old Effuzi's turnover grow about 15 per cent in the past year to around $6 million, says managing director Murray Treweek.

The company has contracts for Hamilton's new rugby ground, Bay Park speedway in Tauranga, and Jade Stadium in Christchurch. Effuzi also makes seats for cinemas, halls, and lecture theatres with 80 per cent exported, mainly to Australia.

The low dollar has contributed to a bumper year for the company, which employs 20 fulltime staff at its Porirua factory.

But Mr Treweek said other factors contributed to its growth.

"Success is a combination of factors: innovation, design ... marketing." And, of course, chasing work.

In January Effuzi designed and installed 1340 seats for the Michael Fowler Centre and will put in a further 1000 this year.

Oddly, it did not win the tender for Trust Porirua Park in Cannons Creek last year, or the WestpacTrust Stadium in Wellington.

"You always seem to get jobs away from home," Mr Treweek said.

"People have a resistance to things that are local - they tend to look away."

- NZPA