Idea opens trading window

By ELLEN READ

Thanks to a healthy dose of ingenuity and some good old-fashioned business sense, Ron Holden is now a 25 per cent partner in a joint venture with one of Australasia's largest aluminium joinery producers.

Holden has been in the window industry for 34 years, so it's an industry he knows well.

Three years ago he was waiting out a restraint of trade period after leaving a company he had set up, so he spent the time researching his next step in the industry.

He had wanted to design an aluminium window system that would be better than anything else available - not an easy task in a very competitive industry.

In 1999 he contacted Australian window and door supplier Bradnam's, which was considering entering the New Zealand market. Australian joinery and design is different from New Zealand's, so the subsequent partnership gave Bradnam's the chance to tap into Holden's expertise.

With the help of a grant from Technology New Zealand, Holden spent a year working from home on his designs.

"[Bradnam's] had checked me out and knew I had credibility in the industry here," he says.

In 2001 with the designs complete, Holden employed two staff and started thinking about premises and Machinery to manufacture some test units.

Along came Capral Aluminium, which supplies Bradnam's with extruded aluminium. Bradnam's boss, Bill Bradnam, confided in Capral about the New Zealand project and they were interested because they already had plants and machinery here, so a three-way venture was formed.

Holden's intellectual property, his designs, was his entry into Nalco, the partnership company.

"It's been an interesting journey. Throughout the process and design there were rumours and stories in the industry about what I was doing," Holden said.

"To have come through all that - and to have turned down some good offers on the way - it's fantastic."

The design and the method of manufacture were patented and Holden believes the process of jointing and sealant injection in one operation is a first for the industry.

He is justifiably proud of the product he designed - Sure-Joint, the connection and assembly system for aluminium windows - now used by Nalco.

Holden says the system has exceptional watertightness, a claim supported by a Building Research Association of New Zealand opinion, the group that is the only Government- accredited assessor to the building industry.

The system is unique because no holes are drilled in the fixed window frames, eliminating a key source of water entry and potentially helping eliminate or reduce leaky building syndrome.

Traditionally aluminium joinery has been assembled with screws, which requires holes to be drilled through the external aluminium framing system.

Holden was involved with the Window Association of New Zealand and he has seen many disputes between builders and home owners over leaks in or around windows.

He said that while the window system wasn't always at fault, watertightness was a central issue in many disputes.

He then became a backyard inventor, designing components, building models from balsa wood and simulating different shapes and designs.

The Sure-Joint window system is already being used by building firms in the top half of the North Island.

Holden expects that demand for the product will spread quickly to other areas and the company is also exploring potential markets in Australia.