Business: Aussie CAT will make your car purr

Jasminka Fielding and the CAT anti-corrosion system, the small black box (right) with the wires coming from it. Photo/Bevan Conley

Call it a force field or an electrochemical process, but by adapting simple science a system called CAT could make a difference to your motor vehicle and other property.

CAT is an Australian-developed electronic anti-corrosion system and a Wanganui couple have become New Zealand distributors for it.

Jasminka and Marcus Fielding are owners of Jon's Furniture Warehouse, buying that business after coming home from across the Tasman. They were both well aware of CAT and see potential for the product in our market.

In its simplest terms, CAT uses power from the motor vehicle's battery. A generator in CAT modifies power from the battery into a "stream" of electrons and sensor pads transfer those electrons to the body of the vehicle.

It cannot prevent corrosion completely but it can certainly provide protection.

Ms Fielding said she had sold a similar product in Australia, and she and her husband were surprised the product had not got any sort of profile in the Kiwi market.

"It's massive in Australia and has even priced up government contracts. The potential for it is huge.

"We live in a highly corrosive environment and people don't realise what the salt air, the sun and chemicals in the air, can do to their vehicle. In Australia they have even installed them on air conditioning units in high-rise buildings, mainly because those units are difficult to get to to service and expensive to replace.

"You can put them on boats, trucks, bulldozers or sheds, anywhere where corrosion is a problem," she said.

In a box no bigger than a smartphone, CAT is usually attached under the bonnet to the firewall and the wires from it are run through or under the vehicle.

"It's really like tricking nature by putting what you could call a 'force field' around your vehicle," Ms Fielding said.

"It can be taken off one vehicle and put on to another if you sold your car. It's easy to install yourself and you don't have to be tradesperson to do it, although Marcus is looking to get someone local who could do the fitting if you wanted," she said.

They are selling two-pad or four-pad CAT systems. The two-pad is ideal for the small car with the four-pad suited to larger vehicles. The two-pad costs $550 and the other $595.

"It's a reasonable price to pay for something that's going to help protect your vehicle. It doesn't repair existing corrosion but it will protect for the future. It's all about protection," Ms Fielding said. In Australia, CAT has been picked up by government departments, local authorities, earth-moving contractors, car dealerships and is finding its way into overseas markets.

It hardly uses any battery power. Even when the vehicle is stationary, it uses less than that needed to run a dashboard clock. And unlike spray-on anti-corrosion material, CAT will protect the whole vehicle.