"One of the parents at the school I was at owns the company and offered me a job so I stayed there about two years. I was only 20 but became a salesman back in NZ for them and later director and shareholder."
The paint was imported before Fleet Australasia was set up in 2002. The following year it started making the paint at its Hinau St factory.
Its core business is supplying field marking paints from small fields to premier stadiums.
About 35 per cent of their business is in exports, mainly to Australia, although it has about 50 per cent of the NZ market.
The company runs a small team of five in Wanganui with just two in the factory but that pair can produce 500,000 litres of paint a year which is a long way from the initial output of 26,000 litres a little over a decade ago.
"The good thing about our product on grass is they put it on, then the grass gets cut and they have to repaint it. It's a continuous realm," Mr Carr said.
But the competition is stiff.
"We're in an absolute price war. We're doing the best we ever have but we're still trying very hard. We're investing with a whole new product range we're about to launch and we're putting on a South Island sales rep next year," he said.
Mr Carr said being located in Wanganui was no impediment.
"When we first started we didn't have a lot of money to set up and exporting was a bit of a hindrance at first. But that revival of the rail line (to Castlecliff) has made a big difference. We've got containers coming in from the UK and we'll ship product back out using the rail link going through Wellington.
"For every negative some people may have about setting up business here, there are at least 10 positives," he said.
The biggest single product they source is titanium dioxide, the substance that provides the white pigment in the paint.
"It's our biggest commodity but the one that fluctuates in price the most. It's a massive supply and demand product. At the time of last financial meltdown some plants just stopped production. The problem is those plants take a month or two to get up to production again and it's expensive.
"When there's lots of stock the price comes down but when the demand grows the price gets squeezed. We're dealing with four different currencies daily because we're bringing in containers from all over the world. It has a huge impact on our margins when prices for titanium dioxide can fluctuate from $4 to $6 a kg."
The positive is it can be stockpiled and Mr Carr said they had virtually got sales and prices set for the rest of the year.
"We'll finish the year in a good place."
The Castlecliff factory is one of three plants worldwide. The others are in the UK and in Nebraska in the US. The UK plant employs about 50 while the US factory has similar numbers to Wanganui. The company has a sales rep in Hamilton with a second expected to come on board in the South Island.
While paint product makes up 80 per cent of its business the rest is in machinery used to apply it.
"We're lucky we've got the top of the range machinery. We have everything from the old-school transfer wheel machines to laser-guided ride-on machines," he said.
And more of their product is being packaged in reusable or recyclable plastics and cardboard.
