| 49 T T Hugh de Lacy Firm goes from strength to strength The company is equipped to deal with any steel and structural fabrication work. Elite Mechanical and Engineering ENGINEERING • SANDBLASTING • ARC SPRAYING • REPAINTS • TOUCH UPS • COMMERCIAL TRUCK SPRAYING • CARAVANS • MOTORHOMES SPECIALISTS 358 Heads Road Wanganui Ph (06) 344 4024 or Pat 021 236 2144 Pleased to supply hire equipment to Elite Mechanical & Engineering Services www.hiremasterwanganui.co.nz | www.hiremasterfeilding.co.nz When the Whanganui company that Michael Mooney was working for in 2011 decided to close the engineering side of its business, it left a lot of clients stranded – and that gave Mike the opportunity to start up his own company, Elite Mechanical and Engineering. Taking on as many of his previous employer’s clients as possible, he used his accumulated holiday pay to set the new business up on the former Wanganui Engineering site on Heads Road, and since then it’s gone from strength to strength. Mike currently has no fewer than 34 employees, allowing Elite Mechanical and Engineering to offer three main lines of service: structural engineering, sheet metal and machine-shop work. “We’re thus able to offer a whole range of engineering and mechanical services,” Mike says. And while Mike was able to enjoy a bit of a lull over the Christmas holidays, his business is back in the full-on mode that was stretching its capacities to the limit throughout last year. The company has a 2000sqm factory sitting on its 5000sqm site, and work flows in not only from the Whanganui region but also Feilding, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Wellington. Soon after launching the business, Joe enhanced its capacity by buying in an American-made $150,000 Maxiem 2040 abrasive jet water-cutter from Manawatu agents Road Runner. It’s a small but vital part of the factory’s equipment, being able to cut two-dimensionally any hard material from marble to tool steel, producing smooth and precise edges from DXF or CAD files, scanned images or Adobe Illustrator files. The water-cutter’s been joined recently by a Trump laser metal cutter. The company is also performing strongly in the structural steel market, with around 500 tonnes of steel going through the workshop in 2022. “Like all things with growth, there is a need to have your own equipment,” Mike says. Accordingly Elite Mechanical and Engineering has invested in new plant that includes a Liebher 55t crane, a Tornado 10t crane, a Genie S85 boom, and other access equipment to fulfil the demands from a wide range of customers. “We’re equipped to deal with any steel and structural fabrication work, from a simple weld to a large and complex structural engineering project,” Mike says. His team specialises in the production of custom-designed parts and equipment, with this service backed up by comprehensive CAD software allowing the fine tuning of machine tolerances to meet the optimal fabrication solution for the individual customer. Manufacturing all types of conveyor systems, from belts to stainless steel, is another specialty of the company which has its own design capacity to take a project from the drawing boards to full installation and back-up maintenance. The company survived the challenges of the Covid pandemic and the Ukrainian war, battling the usual materials and labour shortages, and while the materials problems seem to be sorting themselves out the shortage of skilled and qualified labour remains a drag on the company’s steady expansion over the last seven years. Elite Mechanical and Engineering holds a $10 million insurance cover for public liability and services and repairs, and its staff documents all the services carried out on-site in a maintenance and repair log that sets the stage for future preventive maintenance. Mike’s team is experienced in recognising degradation in machine performance before it becomes a production-line failure. “We’re equipped to deal with any steel and structural fabrication work, from a simple weld to a large and complex structural engineering project.”
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