38 | Machinery repairs the main business The crimp roller finding a ready market nationwide. Oamaru Engineering T T Hugh de Lacy ENGINEERING A specialised agricultural implement called a cover-crop or crimp roller, produced by the small North Otago firm Oamaru Engineering, is finding a ready market nationwide, especially among organic farmers and vineyards. The crimp roller is a key implement in the use of cover-crops, which are crops grown specifically for soil enrichment. Hooked to the front or back of a tractor, the roller crushes the cover-crop, making it die down and thereby naturally nitrogenating the soil for a follow-up crop to be sown into. In some instances, the process is done in a single pass, with the crimp roller riding on the front of the tractor, while a seed drill at the back sows the replacement crop into the one just crushed. “Crimp rollers are beginning to be used in all sorts of agricultural and horticultural situations,” Oamaru Engineering owner Richard Cranston says. “We make them in various sizes to suit the application, with the biggest we’ve made being 3.5m wide for a potato farmer up in Pukekohe. We’ve sent four or five up to the Marlborough vineyards and another three recently to Central Otago.” Oamaru Engineering buys in the steel profiles for the rollers’ blades, along with bearings and other bits and pieces, but otherwise fabricates the machines in its Orwell Street workshop, and markets them through a TradeMe website. As well as several forms of crimp roller, the company also builds and sells aerators and a 2.7m wide beet bucket, but most of its work is in repairing machinery, from welding up broken cowshed rails to fixing broken digger buckets and truck decks. “Right now we’re patching up a farm trailer that has bits missing; then we’ve work to do on a digger and a mole-plough,” Richard says. “We’ve also got quite a good sideline in security fencing: we fenced up the McKeown Petroleum premises at Oamaru Harbour, and a shed of theirs in Oamaru. We get structural steel jobs – one at Waitaki Boys High School – along with fabricating structural steel beams, columns and posts.” Oamaru Engineering started out as a company called Oamaru Repairs and Maintenance, run by Pete Walsh, who was destined to become Richard’s father-in-law. Pete was a maintenance engineer at Oamaru Shingle Supplies’ quarry near the Waitaki River on SH1 until he went out on his own, building an 18m by 12m shed that Oamaru Engineering now occupies. Richard had spent 15 years as an aircraft technician in the Air Force at Whenuapai, where he mainly worked on Hercules transporters. With wife Tracey, he moved to Oamaru in 2012 so their children wouldn’t have to grow up in Auckland, and he worked for the growing local Te Pari agricultural machinery manufacturing company assembling cattle crushes and head bails. When Pete decided to get out of the business, Tracey and Richard bought it and later the workshop itself. Today Richard works with one full-time staffer, and an apprentice, who attends classes three days a week up at Timaru Polytechnic, and works the other two in the Oamaru workshop. We’ve got you covered Christchurch Galvanizing Facility The zinc bath dimensions are 7m long by 1.3m wide by 2.4m deep Choose climate smart durability; a low embodied carbon product with low maintenance over its life cycle, that can be recycled for a sustainable future. 5 Chinook Place, Hornby, Christchurch P: 03 349 0290 or 0800 446 8347 • E: pmpchchadmin@perry.co.nz These dimensions enable steel items up to 7m in length to be single dipped or up to 9.6m in length to be double end-dipped Perry Metal Protection has been strengthening steel through Hot Dip Galvanising (HDG) in New Zealand since 1974. With Operations in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington & Christchurch, Perry Metal Protection oers the most comprehensive galvanizing service in New Zealand Bookkeeping & Payroll | Tax & Compliance | Financial Statements & Annual Review | Business Advisory Accounting & Business Solutions It's about more than just the money. It is about not losing sight of the goals and aspirations - both business and personal - that led you into business in the first place, and about keeping you on track to achieving them. 027 240 0073 tracey@back2black.co.nz www.back2black.co.nz • Stock up to 100mm • Drill up to 60mm Ph. 03 477 7277 www.precisionprofile.co.nz OTAGO’S PLATE-CUTTING SPECIALISTS LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=