74 | MANUFACTURING Metalform T T Virginia Wright Sheet metal at heart of firm’s work Products they develop in-house, and go on to prototype, manufacture and market themselves, lean heavily towards the agricultural sector. “Some clients only need a certain service such as the laser cutting and folding of a particular part....” Dannevirke-based company Metalform has deep roots. Its head design engineer Geoff Easton is the son of its founder, and Geoff’s son Campbell Easton is the CEO of the company, which opened its doors over 60 years ago in the same location where it is now. From the beginning, the company has been working with sheet metal. Its first product, a rotary display bin with multiple sections for things like nuts and bolts, is still available today at places like Mitre 10, Bunnings, and other hardware stores. As the industry has grown and changed, Metalform has grown and changed with it, although their DNA remains in sheet metal manufacturing, as sales and export manager Tim Henman (a good family friend) explains. “Our company has split, so that we now have around 50% of our own product range that we’re responsible for the design, manufacturing, and sales and marketing of, and the other 50% where we do contract manufacturing with clients, still with sheet metal as a base, but they bring us the idea or concept and what results is their product, and it remains their IP. We coin this: ‘From Concept to Reality’.” This factory as a service (FaaS) draws on Metalform’s 60 years of design and production of sophisticated products, and the multi-generational skill base they have built up in design, planning, production and accounting software. Using their world-class precision machinery they work with their clients to successfully take a concept through design and prototype to a finished product ready for the marketplace. By using Metalform’s factory and everything in it: overheads, machinery, skilled staff and so on, clients can mass produce their ideas for considerably less than the significant amount of investment they would require otherwise. “Some clients only need a certain service such as the laser cutting and folding of a particular part, but the biggest value we can provide to clients is where they get us to manufacture everything for a product they are hoping to take to market to solve a problem,” explains Tim. New Zealand Frost Fans provides a good example of the way Metalform collaborates, working together with the client to take an idea that will meet a need in the market and successfully turning it into the required product or machine. In this instance, the giant fans, run by a big diesel engine, stop frost settling on the fruit or grapes, or whatever it might be, and thereby saving the crop. “We like to collaborate to give them what they want, in a very transparent way, and within a budget,” says Tim. The products they develop in-house, and go on to prototype, manufacture and market themselves, lean heavily towards the agricultural sector, like the innovative Tow and Fert. This allows farmers to apply fertiliser as a foliar spray rather than in granular form, thereby reducing their fertiliser budget while helping them become more environmentally responsible and compliant, without reducing pasture production. Another is Tow and Collect, a machine for picking up either manure or debris off pasture, which could be leaves off a golf course, but more usually the likes of horse manure or geese faeces – the latter making the machine very popular in Canada where this is a huge problem. Through these and other products developed in-house, Metalform have established themselves in the US and Australia, and soon to be Europe, and their products are distributed all over the world. They have around 100 staff, making them one of Dannevirke’s largest employers, and their retention rates reflect how much staff are valued. Their longest-serving staff member has been there for 42 years, and many others for a couple of decades at least. They believe in the strength of New Zealand ideas in the international marketplace and take care not to replicate, but to innovate, in order to solve new problems.
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