Defence contract boosts Waikato firm’s Oz expansion
Heavy transport design and engineering company TRT has been awarded the next phase of a major contract with the Australian Defence Force contract as the Waikato family company continues its expansion across the Tasman.
Formally known as Tidd Ross Todd, TRT is building tipper units at its Te Rapa site for export to its Brisbane facility, where they are integrated with truck bodies imported from Europe by Australian Defence.
Tippers are dump trucks designed for handling and depositing large volumes of aggregate, soil and sand.
The company, owned by cofounder Dave Carden and his sons Robert and Bruce, is also a contractor to the New Zealand Defence Force.
The Australian contract was hard fought and won, said manufacturing director Bruce Carden.
Negotiations started six years ago and the competition was “every other transport engineering business in Australia”, he said.
The 100th tipper unit for the Australian military rolled out of the Te Rapa site late last year, about the same time TRT was awarded the next phase of the contract.
“Where we stood out we were the only company in that sector of the market that could provide the complete design solution and what they call ‘integrated logistics solutions’ which means you have to supply all the paperwork to show how you’ve designed the product, what your spare parts back-up is, what your warranty is — effectively a master plan on how you’re going to support that product for the next 20 years,” said Carden. “You can be the best engineers but if you can’t provide all that paperwork, defence won’t work with you because they want that process. It’s another reason we are ISO 9001-accredited.”
TRT has been exporting products to Australia for 25 years on and off. At one stage before Australia’s mining sector crash, its business was 80 per cent for Australia and 20 per cent New Zealand.
“We had to become more New Zealand focused and we had to shed some staff at that time,” Carden said.
“Now our split is more like 50:50 and looking ahead to [2019’s] budget with what we are doing in the crane sector, it’ll turn back to 70:30 I would think.”