| 49 T T Hugh de Lacy Focused on food industry Richmann Egineering supplies custom-built and imported machinery to a wide range of food industry clients. Richmann Engineering ENGINEERING Bringing food processing machinery manufacturing back to New Zealand is the aim of Auckland manufacturing, distribution and repair company Richmann Engineering. Manufacturing is one wing of Richmann Engineering’s 40-odd years of service to the food industries, another is supplying imported processing machinery. Add that to decades of distributing and repairing imported machines while the market for the country’s rapidly expanding range of agricultural and horticultural exports grew exponentially, and the company has developed a unique insight into processors’ needs and the ways to meet them. “We’re working on this machinery constantly and we appreciate the need to improve preventative and maintenance capacity, so I’m bringing out my own line of machines,” company owner Peet Snyman says. “For example, we want machines that we’re able to service and fit with new bearings inside half an hour.” The company has been supplying custom-built and imported machinery to a widening range of clients since it was first set up in 1980 by John Richards and Chris McMann. Richmann Engineering then passed through the hands of Auckland company Lawson Parkins and its owners Alan Rous and Scott O’Brien, before being sold to Peet and Scott in 2016, with Peet completing the acquisition this year by buying out Scott. Peet came to New Zealand from South Africa in 2012 after 15 years serving as an aviation engineer in the South African Air Force. “I sold up everything I had to buy a ticket to New Zealand on a tourist visa, and I arrived in Auckland with just $5000 in my pocket,” Peet says. There was no shortage of demand for his specialised engineering skills, as New Zealand’s burgeoning food industries imported increasing quantities of ever-more sophisticated machinery, and Peet was able to grow his small financial stake into eventual ownership of Richmann Engineering. The company is based at premises on Grayson Avenue, Papatoetoe, where it maintains a staff of eight, comprising engineers, fitter-turners and electricians working in a fully-equipped machine shop, but also available for on-site installations and repairs. Richmann Engineering also maintains two full-time staff working under contract to Moana Fisheries, the country’s biggest Maori-owned fishing company, which has a fish processing facility in Auckland. New, manufactured and second-hand machinery is offered for sale from the Richmann Engineering machine shop, from a range that includes modified atmosphere vacuum packers, vegetable spinners, cheese cutting grids, bandsaws, mincers, dicers, fillers, slicers, conveyors, tray sealers, pallet jacks and forklifts, to name a few. Peet co-owns with Rex Paterson a second company working from the same premises. Called Jetlaze, it operates a water-jet cutter, a laser welder and sheet-metal manufacturing machinery, and it’s run in conjunction with Richmann Engineering. “If I get an inquiry for fabrication I use Jetlaze, and if it’s engineering I use Richmann,” Peet says. The product that Peet launched in October, setting up a manufacturing line after extensive testing of a prototype, is a vegetable spinner that works like the spin-drying cycle of a washing machine, using centrifugal force to dry the likes of lettuces and onions after washing. Richmann Engineering has the distributorship of the Oakham Developments range of food processing machinery, and acts as distributor for Simpro and Linear Motion products. A specialty of Richmann Engineering is its design-and-build capacity and, as well as maintenance contracts, it offers a comprehensive range of parts. ENGINEERING NZ LTD DCS ENGINEERING NZ LTD CS
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