Tooling Around
Comfort for seated bottoms at the Athens Olympic stadium, precision for Fisher & Paykel dishdrawers, and simple, sensible flip-tops for shampoo bottles: RPM International Tool & Dies is tooled up to make all sorts of moulds and dies and is selling its services overseas.
Peter Smith, their General Manager, thought North Shore-based RPM should have a crack at making dies for America's automotive industry. He and partner Mark Vincent researched likely companies in Chicago, made a hit list of four, persisted in calling until they got appointments, jumped on a plane and came back with orders worth US$260,000 for dies to make parts for the new Corvette.
That was in October 2003. The dies have been completed, and the customer, who came to New Zealand to inspect them pre-signoff, was delighted with the job (and the fishing in the Hauraki Gulf). And RPM is pricing its next Chicago automotive project. Smith and Vincent have been a team since 1986, and their company has grown from a two-man outfit in a garage in Glenfield to employing 50 people in a purpose-built engineering workshop in Albany. The engineering shop works 20 hours a day, six days a week, in two shifts. RPM makes 18 to 20 dies per month, depending on the complexity of the projects. Their purposes include plastic moulding (for instance, flip-tops for shampoo bottles and seats for the Athens Olympic Stadium) and stamping anything from ironing boards to paper plates.
RPM's skilled tradespeople can work small and make moulds weighing just a few kilos for tiny plastic cosmetic-pottle parts; or they can handle big jobs, such as injection moulds for Fisher & Paykel dishwashers that weigh 12,000 kilos.
Though 75% of its business comes from New Zealand manufacturers the export component is important, and RPM is targeting more work offshore. "Like most businesses ours is inclined to swing with the economy," says Mr Smith; so they intend to avoid peaks and troughs by establishing a stronger export market.
This case study is reproduced with permission from e.nz magazine. Subscriptions to e.nz are discounted for schools and TENZ members.
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