Export success rolls down the pipeline for Taranaki firm
A small Taranaki engineering firm has become the latest in the region to make it big overseas.
The 13-strong team at Bell Block-based Duroweld has spent the last four months creating a $100,000 machine that puts a protective layer on oil and gas pipes for a company in Spain.
‘‘It should be shipped out this week,’’ company owner Richard Mascull said.
‘‘It’s a cool thing for little New Zealand to be sending something off to the other side of the world.’’
The Pipe master SM-10 is designed primarily to extend the life of old pipes. The pipes are fed into the machine, which welds a new layer on the outside.
‘‘It’s so compact we can take it to site,’’ Mascull said.
The Pipe master has been sold to a company in the Canary Islands and is the second of its kind that the company has made.
A decade ago, Mascull’s company imported a machine from America to weld pipelines.
But it wasn’t quite what they wanted, so they sold it and said, ‘‘let’s make this the Kiwi way’’.
‘‘Being welders, we know what we want to see out there.’’
They created the Pipe master SM-8, which was most recently used in Taupo¯ for the drilling of a geothermal plant.
Duro weld started conversations with the Spanish company about three years ago and agreed to create a version of the Pipe master for them.
‘‘The success of this thing’s been our team,’’ Mascull said.
Karl Shaw, a welding specialist, and Rob Mack, a service technician, were both involved.
‘‘It’s something a bit different,’’ Mack said. ‘‘It’s been good.’’
Mascull, who has a boilermaking background, started the company on his own in 2004.
The firm now does everything from Pipe masters to selling tungsten grit to vets in the South Island to maintain elephant tusks.
‘‘We’re a bit of an unusual company,’’ Mascull said. ‘‘We don’t go out to do general engineering – we just do weird and wonderful stuff.’’
Duroweld is not the first Taranaki engineering firm to create products for overseas businesses.
New Plymouth’s Fitzroy Engineering built an underwater restaurant for a resort in the Maldives.
It also built a 650-tonne accommodation module for an offshore rig in Australia.
Eltham-based Carac Group supplies its Track Grip, which is like cleats for diggers, to Caterpillar, while EHL Group, of Bell Block, built Azura, a wave energy device, which was chosen to supply electricity to Hawaii’s grid in 2015.
Howard Wright Limited, also of Bell Block, makes medical beds and stretchers, with Australia and the UK two of its biggest markets.