Research and develpment: Tandarra Engineering

Fitter Leon Andrew at work on one of Tandarra's metal-forming machines. Photo / Dean Purcell

Research and development doesn't always happen in the obvious places. Anthony Doesburg profiles some of the companies getting taxpayer help to boost their innovation efforts.

With the dairying and high-tech sectors routinely hogging the business headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking New Zealand's manufacturing industry was extinct.

Tandarra Engineering is proof that it's not, and that exporting lives on too, despite the high New Zealand dollar.

In the space of 32 years, Tandarra founder Brian Watson has gone from making kiwifruit packaging materials in his garage to producing machines used in the construction of Europe's largest shopping mall.

The company, which today occupies a 10,000sq m factory and employs 20 people, including Watson's son Lance, has become an exporter of rollforming equipment to metal fabricators, at about $500,000 a machine.

A big part of its success, says Lance Watson, is the company's reputation for tackling challenging jobs. In the rollforming world, that means being willing to design machinery that can produce sheet metal, mostly for roofing, with unique profiles.

"Over the past three years we've been involved with a company in Australia relaunching the original corrugated shape that dates back to the early 1900s."

The new profile has deeper barrel-like corrugations than is traditional so it can carry 45 per cent more rainwater. Architects like it because it enables lower pitched roofs.

"In terms of R&D, there was a lot of work involved, a lot of trial and error in modifying our manufacturing methods to accurately create that shape."

Rollforming machinery design is something of a "dark art", says Watson, which involves working backwards from the desired final shape, helped by computer modelling.

But computers can't account for the variability of the raw material - rolls of steel - from which the sheets are made. Getting a perfect product can call for "a bit of head-scratching" and tweaking to iron out the wrinkles.

"Then you hope you can get four or five orders for the same machine."

It's not by chance that the company has grown and continues to have a sustainable export business. Lance Watson says R&D spending goes on efficiency improvements and product development and the company trades on its readiness to do work "that's a little left of centre".

"If a customer decides it wants something and we're the only business that can achieve it, then they'll ring us by default. And that goes back to R&D and Dad's Kiwi find-a-way attitude."

What: Rollforming machinery designer and manufacturer, East Tamaki
R&D spending: About $400,000 a year.