INSPIRED BY KIWI INNOVATION
The marine environment is tough on products especially those that integrate technology. New marine products need to exceed internationally agreed marine standards and for a company to produce a new marine product every 20 days is something few businesses in the world can do. Welcome to the world of Navico. Navico is a global leader in marine electronics, an innovative force within the recreational and commercial marine market. Product development is at the heart of Navico’s business model and culture and this is coupled with an unprecedented product launch schedule that enables them to deliver pioneering products across a broad range of boating activities. Navico has steadily outperformed its competitors and grown its market share since 2009. Navico’s vision is always front and centre; ‘To be first in the marine sector to integrate fast moving technology to create a seamless user experience at an unprecedented level of quality and reliability’. The company develops and manufactures marine electronics and digital services under the brand Lowrance, Simrad, B&G and C-MAP. Products include advanced sonar and echo sounding, navigation solutions, mapping and chart plotters, multifunctional displays, radar, gyrocompasses and VHF radios. With headquarters in Norway, Navico’s management team includes Olympic sailors and former Volvo Ocean Racing executives. However the majority of Navico Groups design, development and testing is carried out in New Zealand in a purpose built facility within the Grow North Innovation District. Navico has a rich history of investment in R&D with the majority of Navico’s revenues coming from products launched during the past 24 months and In the last two years, Navico has developed the international award-winning HALOTM Pulse Compression Radar technology, 3D sonar technology for fish finding and chart plotters used by boaters worldwide. Recent new innovation includes HALO24, a new compact 24 inch Dome Radar with industry first 60 RPM which gives the ultimate in collision avoidance at close range, without sacrificing long range. They also have set a new standard in boating with the new Simrad Information Display, a seamless, full-dash solution, sleek design with a look and feel as unique as the vessel itself. Navico’s recent merger with C-MAP a leading supplier of digital navigation products will accelerate the companies’ shared ambition to create the world’s biggest digital marine ecosystem. “This merger is an incredible opportunity to drive innovation in the marine industry and lead a new digital era,” said Leif Ottosson, CEO, Navico Group. www.navico.com If your business is based in Auckland North, invests in R&D and has a growing customer base, your business could be featured here. Contact Kel Marsh, kel@corporateriver.com. For other inspired Kiwi stories see www.inspiredkiwi.co.nz
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Zenith Tecnica: manufacturer of 3D parts for the extreme conditions of space and Formula 122/3/2019 Manufacturing precision parts for the extreme conditions of outer space and Formula 1 is an complicated and expensive process. The certification needed is tough to pass and costs mount when only a small number of parts are required. 3D printing has long promised to deliver the ideal solution but while 3D printed plastic and aluminium parts are commonplace, parts printed in the materials needed for extremes of high performance, long life and reliability requires the latest technology and knowledge, that is as yet, still hard to find anywhere in the world. Zenith Tecnica is one of just a handful of organisations around the world that specialises in manufacturing titanium parts for the aerospace and medical industries and for F1 racecars and America’s Cup yachts. Electron Beam Melting (EBM) printers fuse metal powder using a high-energy, high-temperature electron beam have been installed at their facilityin the Grow North Innovation District. The company is capable of mass production, short runs, or a single customised part for an individual human, as they do for a US-based manufacturer of knee and hip implants. “That’s where this technology is great, because you can do pretty much whatever you want,” says Zenith Tecnica’s business development manager Bruno Le Razer. “The challenge is to reach production level, and to do that you not only need a machine, you need facilities and a great team and all the quality systems to achieve the necessary certifications. The quick turnaround makes 3D printing so useful for prototyping and testing, as we do for the America’s Cup syndicates.We are part of a very small club in the world.” Air New Zealand recently formed a partnership with Zenith Tecnica to investigate ways to use the company’s 3D-printed components in its aircraft and ground-based operations. Wayne Thomas, 3D printing and advanced manufacturing project manager for the airline, says Zenith’s story, while not well known at home, is impressive. “They have a very strong reputation internationally in titanium, and a lot of customers in critical, high- performance industries such as medical and space. It’s an incredible capability, really, and it’s right here on our doorstep.” Zenith Tecnica a preferred option for anyone looking at mass customisation of components for small to large aerospace structures. zenithtecnica.com ZENITH TECNICA CERTIFICATION AS9100:RevD certified and has produced many flight-certified components for satellites that are currently in orbit. ISO9001:2015 certified and has produced many components for high-performance vehicles such as Formula 1 cars and produced many components on high-performance marine vessels such as Grand Prix F1 powerboats and America’s Cup yachts ISO13485:2016 certified for the manufacture of human implants and have produced many implants in use today. If your business is based in Auckland North, invests in R&D and has a growing customer base, your business could be featured here. Contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz For other inspired Kiwi stories see www.inspiredkiwi.co.nz
We’re in an age where brands can’t escape the close scrutiny of customers and consumer watchdogs. One bad product experience can degrade a brand’s reputation. This is impacting the way products are designed and marketed, with greater attention paid to the customer experience and the physiology of buyers and users and how they react to products - all to be considered before starting the product development process. With fast one-off product prototypying widely available, more manufacturers are valuing the product designers experience, especially their insights on assessing product-market fit, research and manufacturing knowledge. Creating new products is complicated: Insight-driven designers increase the level of innovation while lowering risk, making new product development a far more rewarding process for individual manufacturers. The wave of new connected digital and IOT products presents new challenges for manufacturers, which is in turn changing the way that product development projects are run. There is also a heightenedawareness about the impact that products have on the environment and society, and that awareness continues throughout the product development and manufacturing process.Industrial design firm Blender works with companies to help them tackle these new challenges, and reframeing their thinking about the problems that they believe they are solving. Blender has invested in their own methodologies to help clients think more insightfully and holistically as they explore new types of products and user experiences. With a strong design-for-manufacture ability Blender specialises in the development of electronic products, working closely with electronics engineers and multi disciplinary teams. “We are seeing fantastic results from our approach, after all the first and most important step towards creating a commercially successful product is defining the right thing to make!” says CEO Ollie McDermott. “We're always focused on the problems that products solve, who the key stakeholders are and what the goals are for our clients. We’ve developed a successful formula and turned this into a service – we believe the first of it’s kind. It works, and it’s something our team is really proud of.” Blender has won numerous international and NZ design awards for the products they have developed. One example is an R&D grant for a project developing a new shock mitigating boat seat ‘Jolt Rider’ (Below) which recently won a Bronze at the Best Awards. For further information www.blender.nz If your business is based in Auckland North, invests in R&D and has a growing customer base, your business could be featured here. Contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz. For other inspired Kiwi stories see www.inspiredkiwi.co.nz
Owners of small and medium sized businesses go on steep learning curves. These take more time than anticipated and SME owners are frequently diverted away from vital business-growth activities. Software that assists leaders to make good decisions exist but most have been developed to satisfy large organisations’ needs. These are expensive and based on legacy practices so don’t provide the same transformational benefits that front-edge technology can now deliver to SME owners. For most of us GPS means that we never have to interrupt our journey to ask someone for directions. Similarly CEOs focused on seizing an opportunity can’t afford to continually ‘pull over’ to search for the information needed for smart business decisions. CEO’s now can have critical business information pushed to them while they are on the move. AI is able to gather data about individual businesses, constantly learning in order to answer complex questions. Aider’sAI actively assesses your data, offers real-time insights and suggests options, providing a large shift in the way that owners go about building businesses. Aider is the SME owner’s own ‘know it all rockstar’ business assistant that shows off when needed. Aider provides enterprise-level responses at an affordable price pushing real-time business data directly to devices using everyday conversation or text. Aider is unique in how it looks at business data, noting relationships and trends in order to give owners holistic insights about their business – necessary if they are to thrive in our rapidly changing world. Taking only a few minutes to install, Aider is a mobile tool that comes loaded with built-in apps covering local weather, news and events. From there Aider provides best-business knowhow and immediately plugs into the business accounting, point of sale, payroll and rostering platform. While data is stored within security levels, Aider instantly answers owners questions - for example; ‘what’s today’s top-selling product?’, ‘who’s rostered on today?’ or ‘what is my web traffic for the month?’. During the next five years some SME businesses will outperform their competitors. Owners that embrace AI will make better, faster decisions, have more time to work ON their business and more focus on creating innovative products and services. With their attention initially on Australia and NZ, Aider is intent on transforming the way business owners grow businesses around the world. https://www.aider.ai/ Below: Aider co-founders, (Left) Pete Weaver and Brendan Roberts, CEO. (Right) The Aider team. If your business is based in Auckland North, invests in R&D and has a growing customer base, your business could be featured here. Contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz. For other inspired Kiwi stories see www.inspiredkiwi.co.nz
Flintfox is a thought leader and disruptive innovator in Trade Revenue Management (TRM) solutions. Flintfox has 30 years of expertise in resolving trade revenue challenges across supply chains offering TRM solutions to over 23,000 users in 24 countries across manufacturing, wholesale distribution and retail industries.
As the use of cloud and digital technologies grows, the way that retailers, distributors, and their customers interact is transforming. The trading environment is becoming complex and keeping up managing with pricing and promotions well is a growing challenge but is also the source of a competitive advantage. Flintfox has created the world’s fastest pricing engine - 1 million prices calculated in 1 minute. There is no other solution that offers Flintfox’s ability to manage so many complex price and rebate calculations in real time. Globally, manufacturers are focusing on how they influence sales where high volume, small margin transactions are a fact of life and margin visibility is critical to being profitable. The gains are large and technology is king when it comes to Trade Revenue Management for supply chains. Distributors and retailers are trading across more sales channels than ever before. The complexity of pricing increases as retailers and suppliers find themselves managing pricing and promotional activities across disparate systems and devices. Disconnected spreadsheets, apps and manual processes exacerbate the challenges of managing pricing, promotion pricing and trade incentives. Flintfox’s Trade Revenue Management Suite provides the real-time pricing and rebate visibility that supply chains need to be competitive. Flintfox’s hyper-speed pricing engine streamlines processes while increasing the accuracy of price calculations. Comparable solutions/ERPs cannot manage these complex pricing structures. The suite of modules integrates seamlessly with any existing ERP system and consolidates disparate sources of pricing into one source of pricing ‘truth’ for any sales channel. Discounts, price changes and promotions can be managed in one place and instantly live for any sales channel such as eComemrce or in store. Headquartered in Albany, NZ, Flintfox is building geographical presence and a reputation in all key markets such as North America, Latin America APAC and Europe. Flintfox is well-positioned to take advantage of the growing global demand in the Trade Revenue Management space. Flintfox. Recent Awards
In 2015, James Koo (CEO) and Jae Yoo (Director) dropped out of university with a dream to transform the NZ education experience. 3 years later, the two co-founders are now leading New Zealand’s fastest growing student community.
It all began during the 2015 second-semester exams when Jae was faced with a decision. With $10 left in his bank account, Jae had to choose between printing out his exam material or his next meal. With the belief that money should not be a barrier between students and education, the two co-founders created a free printing service where local businesses could choose to sponsor students’ printing. The word of the free printing service quickly started spreading among the student population, and the company began growing exponentially. James Koo says “When we saw the student community grow past the 10,000 mark, we realized that we were in a privileged position to bring more positive impact to the student experience. That’s when we decided to launch the Niesh app.” The Niesh app is a platform that allows businesses to connect with their target student audience. “When we saw how many businesses were eager to sponsor the students’ printing, we knew there was a need for a platform to connect businesses to students” says Jae. The Niesh app was launched in March 2017, and was ranked No.1 on the iOS app store and No.3 on the Google playstore during O’Week 2018. “Our solution is unique because students come onto the Niesh platform for the single purpose of connecting with our brand partners.” says James. “Many brands turn to Facebook and Instagram to reach out to students with their communications. But students are on those platforms to have fun. To watch memes & videos. When students come to Niesh, their only focus is connecting with our brand partners.” As the nation’s largest student community, Niesh now works with over 100 businesses including household brands such as Burger King, NZ Breakers, and STA Travel. “If a business has students as customers or employees, we can help them solve their problems” says James. The young company has received several recognitions including NZ Business of the Year from Network NZ, and Winners of the ecentre Innovation Showcase, a Grow North Innovation District event. https://www.niesh.co.nz If your business is based in the Grow North Innovation District, invests in R&D, has a growing customer base, and you would like your business to be featured here, contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz Retail businesses are competing to win with ecommerce. Online retail is now omni channel – eBay, Facebook, Amazon, apps, email marketing and catalogues each require a ‘digital twin’ of the physical product to deliver a seamless experience for customers across all channels.
The highly sought after ‘endless shelves’ that online retailers aspire to is challenging when retailers are stocking thousands of products from hundreds of suppliers, and all product data needs to be manually added and data quickly becomes inaccurate or redundant. Data has to remain accurate across multiple software systems and glued to images and video at the point of sale and many retailers accept time-consuming data fixes and frustrations as part of the cost of building an online business, which is why many limit their online listings to a core range. VESTA CENTRAL’s Australasian customers are using Vesta to build future focused, customer-centered retail businesses while eliminating up to 90% of the manual tasks that are involved with managing supplier price and product data. This significantly lowers business costs bringing higher margins. Vesta allows single-point supplier data entry and cross-references, validates and cleanses product data to ensure that the ‘truth’ about each product remains accurate across the overall retail business system. This ensures that no matter who uses the business system or where, they are always dealing with accurate product information. Vesta’s simplicity suits retailers of all sizes and their cost effectiveness and reliability sets Vesta apart from their competitors With Vesta in place, business owners suddenly become free to work on adding value to their businesses. Barriers to business growth are lowered and retail owners can take advantage of future technologies as they become readily available. As an example, a major buying group in the Australian hardware sector that has over 600 members and 500 suppliers, enlisted the help of VESTA Central and its partner VTH to build the first of its kind database for any Australian independent buying group. Based in the Grow North Innovation District, Vesta Central has recently been the recipient of a $15m Callaghan R&D grant that will allow their development team to explore future technologies such as leveraging AI and block chain technologies to increase data quality and integrity. Vesta is also expanding into different industry sectors and is pursuing opportunities in the US market. Vesta Central. If your business is based in the Grow North Innovation District, invests in R&D, has a growing customer base, and you would like your business to be featured here, contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz Integrated Control Technology (ICT) is a leading designer and manufacturer of intelligent electronic access and security solutions, bringing peace of mind across the world.
Increasingly higher levels of security are required for compliance and to ensure employee peace of mind. New technologies such as facial recognition, long-range card readers, smart cameras and remote wireless locks offer much higher levels of security, but because the cost to replace security hardware is hard to justify, many organisations continue to maintain legacy security systems. New Zealand company ICT has developed an innovative solution that includes the latest technology while also integrating with existing systems to create a new layer of intelligent security across organisations. By taking security design back to first principles ICT keeps asking, “How could things be better for the end user?” This question has led to a smart solution that is intelligent and intuitive, delivering world-class access control, intruder detection and building automation into one seamless, flexible solution that is very easy to useand whichkeeps evolving with organisations’ needs as they grow. ICT technology has future proofed security systems of tens of thousands of the world’s most exacting, enterprises including; Royal Canadian Mint, SAP, General Motors, LG Electronics, University of British Columbia, National Portrait Gallery AUS, United Nations, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC and Walmart. With customers in North America, Australasia, UK/Europe and the Middle East, ICT has opened regional offices in Melbourne, Denver, Toronto, and Amersham in the UK. Small companies love ICT’s off-the-shelf ProtegeWXwith its easy to use web-based interface. ProtegeGXis for large organisations and can be used on its own, or as part of a comprehensive solution that integrates seamlessly with other technology onsite. ProtegeGXallows for infinite expansion, and while competitor systems allow for growth, ICT’s flexible licensing model ensures you get all the features needed without paying for extra features you have no use for. ICT products are designed and developed in their state-of-the-art, purpose-built facilities in NZ, with research and development center, sales, full technical support, and manufacturing teams based out of the Rosedale, Albany facility to enable a tight feedback loop ensuring continual improvement. ICT is growing rapidly. Staff numbers have increased by 52% since January and construction is underway at ICT headquarters in the Grow North Innovation District to double its size. ICT technology If your business is based in the Grow North Innovation District, invests in R&D, has a growing customer base, and you would like your business to be featured here, contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz Wellington Drive Technologies is doing its part to reduce greenhouse emissions worldwide through innovative new energy management systems.
Sales of electric vehicles are on the increase and the electric motors that power these vehicles can run for years with little attention. Electric motors have been used in commercial refrigeration and cooling systems for decades, and today these systems are the world’s largest single consumer of electrical power. It means that worldwide, hundred’s of thousands of old refrigeration systems keep running - still providing cooling, but operating very inefficiently. It has been suggested that the single most effective action to fight climate change is widespread smart refrigerant management. Rising energy prices, concern over greenhouse emissions and government regulations bring challenges, and new government incentives are expected to fuel strong growth of energy-efficient cooling management systems. Albany based Wellington Drive Technologies is a leading global provider of energy-efficient electronic motors and refrigeration control solutions for commercial refrigeration. With a global footprint, Wellington Drive serves some of the world’s leading food and beverage brands and refrigerator manufacturers, with products and solutions that reduce energy consumption and improve product sales. Whilst electrical motors still remain as an integral part of Wellington Drive’s business, it is no longer simply a motor company. Wellington Drive are developing and acquiring technologies that help food and beverage brands better manage their point of sale equipment (including coolers) and help them grow their sales by enabling direct connection with the consumer. Through proprietary smart refrigeration controllers and management software, customers move into the Internet of Things (IoT) where there is increased opportunity to add value, create higher energy savings and bank government power saving incentives. Wellington Drive has always valued research and innovation. Since beginning in 1986 as a patent licensing organization it has retained a strong culture of innovation. CEO, Greg Allen explains, “Our priority is our customer; we take customer innovation, continuous improvement and service excellence seriously. It is also the foundation of our future growth.” Wellington Drive is headquartered in the Grow North Innovation District from where it manages supply chain, logistics and R&D. It is listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange. Wellington Drive Technologies For more information on how to feature your business here, please contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz Designing ‘eyes’ for electronic products puts Teknique at the forefront of a new global industry.7/8/2018 Technology is increasingly helpful, however technology limitations constantly remind us that it never fully understands what we want to achieve. That's going to change.
Technology can’t predict what we want to do until it can learn, and it learns when it can ‘see’ what’s happening. An image contains thousands of pieces of information, a video millions – millions of clues about who the lens is looking at - their habits, what’s going right and what’s going wrong, even picking up people’s moods. Giving technology ‘sight’ is enabling a new level of benefits without the user continually giving instructions. Example: Not long ago car-reversing cameras were novel, then multiple car cameras began making highway driving a lot safer - and now cars that can ‘see’ can find their way to a destination and park with one push of a button. Our world is evolving into one where smart appliances, intelligent personal assistants and automated vehicles will remember our preferences, make smart decisions and become a lot more intuitive to use. This could mean 45 billion connected cameras in use in five years and this provides a big opportunity for Albany based Teknique which is already a leader in this field. Teknique creates better ways to view, interpret and understand the world by integrating smart camera platform technology into electronic products. Teknique’s team of designers, thinkers, engineers and prototypers are dedicated to intelligent product development that creates better ways to view, interpret, understand and interact with what’s going on in the world. Since he founded Albany-based Teknique with his brother 14 years ago, Teknique CEO Ben Bodley and his team has grown Teknique to the point where over 95 per cent of their customers are offshore primarily in the United States, and Teknique recently celebrated an annual growth rate of 607% ranking 8th in the Deloitte Fast50. Talk to the Teknique team and they say what they enjoy most is seeing their technology in some of the worlds most successful commercial and consumer products. Being able to say “Hey I was part of that” gives the team the motivation to continue breaking new ground and inventing what the world hasn’t seen yet. “There is no limit to how cameras, computer vision, and AI are going to change user experience across the world” says Bodley. www.teknique.com For more information on how to feature your business here, please contact Kel Marsh, kel@grownorth.co.nz |
AuthorsGrow North articles are written by CEOs that call the Grow North Innovation District home. Edited by Kel Marsh. A free service. See more Innovative Kiwi stories
March 2019
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