10 | BUSINESS Rotorua Business Awards: Hayes International Orders from overseas skyrocket T T Hugh de Lacy “Hayes has invested heavily in modern CNC equipment, such as lathes and mills, and we manufacture as much as possible in-house.” Whether you are upgrading or maintaining your machinery or equipment Rotorua Electroplaters can ensure that all your Hard Chroming needs will be met e ectively to minimize your downtime. Our services & specialties include: Huge demand from its overseas markets for rollforming machinery has Rotorua company Hayes International’s manufacturing capacity fully committed for 2022, and new orders being placed for 2023. Rollforming is a continuous metal-forming process using special machinery to convert flat sheets, usually of coated steel, into products such as roofing, cladding and structural components. Aluminium and stainless steel, usually supplied like the steel in coils, are other metals commonly rollformed. It’s an important industry within the New Zealand and overseas building materials markets because rollformed components form a significant part of roofing and cladding specifications. Over the past 60 years Hayes International has grown to an annual turnover of $20 million, with 98% of its output exported to no fewer than 87 countries world-wide. Working from a 5000sqm site in Riri Street, Rotorua, Hayes employs 85 local staff, plus another five in Canada and the United States, its main markets. The key to the company’s success as a manufacturer in a competitive overseas market has been its “global reach through our group network and agencies, and our group-wide technical resources and experience covering all facets of the rollforming industry,” company director Wayne Kennedy says. “We’ve also built considerable international brand recognition and industry knowledge through 60 years of experience in innovation and in-house design. “A sound world-wide market base, with much of our business coming from existing customers, is augmented by the international representation we’ve developed through our group entities or agents on most continents.” One of Hayes International’s biggest markets is the United States where the company leverages on its Kansas-based owners through a team of US sales and service technicians. Rollforming is a moderate-sized industry in New Zealand with many small and medium-sized businesses operating in the larger cities. “Hayes has invested heavily in modern CNC equipment, such as lathes and mills, and we manufacture as much as possible in-house, outsourcing additional capacity, such as steel hardness treatments, as necessary.” “Market demand is running unbelievably high, given the turbulent times of Covid and supply-chain issues, even as the escalation of shipping and raw material costs drives up prices,” says Wayne. “We exceeded our budget expectations for 2021, order intake has been at an all-time high, and we are now fully backlogged through 2022.” The main Covid-driven problem Hayes International faces is getting supplies of materials, but the pandemic has also created employment difficulties. “With unemployment at a record low and immigration halted by Covid and government policy, staffing is a very large problem, to the degree that retention has now become as important as recruitment,” says Nick Looijen, Hayes’ General Manager. And Hayes International doesn’t have the global market to itself: there are a couple of New Zealand firms offering competition in Australia, along with two in the United States and another in Australia. “There is a plethora of cheap and cheerful Asian manufacturers, mostly in China, which only bother us when competing in developing markets with their low-cost and often poor-quality equipment.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=