Help for blind wins technology award

Technology to help blind and visually impaired people earned HumanWare top honours at this year's Allied Telesyn New Zealand Hi Tech Awards.

The awards, coinciding with the ES Connectivity trade show, aim to promote, encourage and celebrate innovation.

Christchurch-based HumanWare, described by judges as "one of the brightest lights among New Zealand's elite exporters", was named supreme winner and electronics company of the year. The company develops Braille and speech technology, video magnification tools and screen-reading software.

Auckland-based Pharos Systems won the software company of the year award for its "outstanding strategy to enter and establish itself in the US market" with its enterprise print asset management solutions.

Another Auckland company, Neuren Pharmaceuticals, picked up biotechnology company of the year award for its work developing drugs to treat brain injury and trauma.

The award for marketer of the year went to SLI Systems, of Christchurch, for setting a "perfect example of the difference businesses can achieve by adopting a formal marketing approach".

Endace Measurement Systems became the first New Zealand company to list on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market. It also won the high growth company of the year and deal of the year awards.

Esphion was named emerging company of the year for its network disaster protection technology, which also netted it the most innovative product of the year award.

Mason Pratt and Michael Moyle were joint winners of the young achiever award. In 2001, aged 25, Pratt co-founded web-based software solutions company Provoke Solutions and as managing director developed it into a $3 million operation. Moyle was recognised for helping Allied Telesyn become more efficient, including increasing the speed of network updates to help increase revenue by millions of dollars.

The flying kiwi award for high-tech heroes was presented posthumously to Sir Woolf Fisher and Maurice Paykel, who founded Fisher and Paykel in 1934. The company now employs more than 2600 people and has revenue of more than $1 billion.

While the commercial industry rewarded its best in Christchurch on Saturday night the next generation of innovators had their chance to shine at the 2005 Bright Sparks Hi Tech Competition awards the night before.

More than 130 students aged between 11 and 18 entered the competition, organised by industry training organisation ETITO.

Aucklander Matthew Richardson took home the supreme senior award for his local position system, Navbot, and Jon Woodhead, also from Auckland, won the supreme junior award for Frog Paradise, a solar powered automatically controlled frog environmental unit. Matthew Austin from Palmerston North won the supreme commercial award for his Flood Alert system.