Pulling all the right strings
The Kiwi way
One-time farmer and agricultural contractor, Peter Holdsworth FIPENZ founded Pultron Composites in 1982. He'd shown an interest in engineering from a young age, so it was probably only a matter of time before his natural instincts took over and he found himself drawn back into the world of engineering. He completed an electrical engineering degree at the University of Canterbury and began experimenting with pultrusions, initially intending to make wind turbine blades so he could design and manufacture his own wind turbines for rural applications. However, the time wasn't right for small-scale wind turbines, so he turned his attention to something more down-to-earth and of immediate use – developing more robust and durable fence posts.
However, pultrusion technology was virtually unheard of in New Zealand and the cost to import manufacturing plant was prohibitive, so Mr Holdsworth began to develop his own, fabricating all the necessary equipment and designing the processes required to turn the strands of fibreglass into composite materials. Using a combination of scrap steel, old hydraulic rams and pumps, and much trial-anderror, he developed a recipe to polymerize the resins and couple them to the glass fibres successfully. This meant getting the resin mix and temperature just right, and calculating the correct speed to pull the fibres through the heated die. He also made good use of his farm tractor, which was the initial motive power to pull the resin and fibreglass through his home-grown heated die.
Within eight months, he perfected his own pultrusion process and began turning out 10-millimetre-diameter electric fence posts, and almost immediately, he took on two staff to keep production up with demand. Thanks to the small scale of the fibreglass sector in New Zealand, interest in his production process soon spread and he began to diversify his product base.
