| 61 T T Hugh de Lacy Keeping the wine and water flowing Hooked On Engineering works out of a 550sqm workshop on Old Renwick Road, Blenheim, which features a fully equipped machine shop and fabrication department. Hooked on Engineering ENGINEERING Nine years in the navy, including an apprenticeship completed in maintenance engineering, set up Jarrod Hook and his Hooked On Engineering company in Blenheim for a timely launch into the wine industry. The timing might not have looked the best – it was in 2019, just before the Covid pandemic outbreak, that he bought a company he had previously been subcontracting to – but it coincided with a surge of growth in the wine industry that cushioned Jarrod against the subsequent economic slump. He has quickly grown the company to a staff of 11 maintenance engineers and fabricators, working not just in Marlborough but taking their skills as far north as Hawke’s Bay and as far south as Christchurch. “I was very lucky to land in an industry that grew rather than shrank during the Covid shut-down, opening a great opportunity to grow the company,” Jarrod says. He started his navy apprenticeship at the Devonport Naval Base in Auckland, leaving the service after nearly a decade and heading down to Springlands to live with his wife Jenna. After working in the industry for several years, Jarrod decided to start his own business. He worked for about 18 months as a subcontractor to Mark McClintock and his M L McClintock Ltd business, which was offering service and maintenance capacity to the local wine industry. Jarrod ended up buying Mark out, and Mark continues to work with him as part of the team. “We developed a bit of a name for ourselves fairly quickly just by word of mouth – the best recommendation a young business can get – maintaining and repairing all the machinery that wineries need, such as the wine-presses, receival equipment and filtration.” And just when things were going fine with the winery work, Jarrod started a partnership with the Marlborough District Council doing repairs and maintenance to its freshwater and waste-water pump stations. “The district council is a great partner to be working with, and it gives us another string to our wine industry bow,” he says. “2018 was a great time to start the company because wine was in a growth spurt, and demand for our services just grew. It’s steadied since then, but we’ve got plenty of work with great support from the wine industry, and we’ve got our staff to thank for a lot for that. “I’m really lucky to have the staff I’ve got; they’re a great bunch of people, and they’ve made growing the company relatively easy. “Of course, setting up an essential service like ours was a very testing time with all the compliance and procedural requirements and access to work-sites, and it feels good to have come through that side of it.” It was Jarrod’s wife Jenna who suggested naming the company Hooked On Engineering as a play on Jarrod’s surname that hinted at his commitment to the engineering industry. Today, Hooked On Engineering works out of a 550sqm workshop on Old Renwick Road, Blenheim, which features a fully equipped machine shop and fabrication department. Hooked on Engineering Keeping it local with Hooked on Engineering
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