New Zealand metals engineering industry meets to build better future

Conference report

The Metals New Zealand Industry Conference – held on May 9-10 at the Classic Flyers Aircraft Museum in Tauranga – aimed at building better business for New Zealand engineering companies. As the conference feedback demonstrated, all programme items contributed to the success.

On Thursday there were the industry tours, the Heavy Engineering Research Association (HERA), Steel Construction NZ (SCNZ), and National Association of Steel-framed Housing (NASH) sessions, and the main conference.

On the Friday, the ‘Competing with Fabricated Metals Product Imports’ facilitated by Michelle Boag and a SCNZ workshop facilitated by Kevin Dawkins created great interest and debate with useful feedback for the next actions by Metals NZ.

The conference kicked off with two well-attended industry tours: The first to the Titanium Industry Development Association’s (TiDA) research facilities followed by a visit to Page Macrae Coatings. The second tour was stainless steel-focused and visited the facilities of NDA Engineering Group in Hamilton and then on to Tauranga-based Lawter (NZ) Ltd.

The SCNZ session covered a range of topics from survival tips for contractors to earthquake- related construction. The Metals NZ session by Dr Steven Schmid, Associate Professor Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering of the University of Notre Dame in Illinois, USA, was of particular relevance for R&D-conscious businesses and research providers. Dr Schmid is part of a White House taskforce which advises the President on how to keep manufacturing in the US and how to repatriate it.

Dr Schmid explained that the strategy that has been followed successfully has been partnerships, both in workforce development and in university/industry relations, often facilitated by government. The technologies that have had a large impact include additive manufacturing, especially the trends of rapid tooling, functionally graded materials and now-consumer 3D printing.

The HERA session by speakers Nick Inskip and Boaz Habib focused on renewable energy, with emphasis on geothermal and marine energy. A look at IP and harnessing that as a path to success was also presented. The main conference session kicked off with the telephone conference with the Business, Innovation & Employment Minister Steven Joyce, followed by a welcome from Metals NZ Chairman Noel Davies. Keynote speakers were Australian Steel industry Advocate Dennis O’Neill, former All Blacks coach Sir Graham Henry and Catherine Beard, CEO of Manufacturing NZ and NZ Export.

The Friday workshop with the theme “Competing with Fabricated Metal Product Imports” and facilitated by Metals NZ communication strategy advisor Michelle Boag, attracted the attention of the industry leadership. Based on the fact that the public sector is a key customer of our industry, the focus on the government procurement reforms and the new Rules of Sourcing where seen as an opportunity to ensure the local industry receives a fair go.

Following presentations by sector group representatives from TiDA, HERA, NZ Stainless Steel Development Association (NZSSDA) and Casting Technology NZ (CTNZ) on technology advances to improve local industry competitiveness, Government Procurement Senior Advisor Murray Herrick outlined the proverbial shift in the goal post in government procurement with increased emphasis on balanced decision-making.

Dr Ganesh Nana from BERL introduced the HERA-commissioned tender evaluation tool which would allow consideration of all criteria listed in the new procurement rules. And HERA Director Dr Wolfgang Scholz outlined what differentiates our New Zealand offerings from that of the overseas competition, so that procurers have all arguments for choosing the local supply chain as the better deal.

Michelle Boag summarised her research, which included consultation with procurers, in stating that with the new Rules of Government Procurement, the industry has a unique opportunity to capitalise on. New Zealand’s engineering industry needs to focus now on the real advantages that accrue to New Zealand by using NZ-based expertise, services and products.

In order for procurers to follow the rules and also use the BERL tender evaluation tool the industry needs to engage, educate and build relationships with procurers at both industry and individual company level. Ms Boag’s outline of a detailed action agenda caused much discussion and no doubt will lead to a strong continued programme of advocacy and engagement, especially by Metals New Zealand.

Many delegates have expressed positive views on the conference and noted the strong sense of collaborative industry spirit in the event.

www.metals.org.nz

Winners from New Zealand’s metals industry

The winners of this year’s Metals NZ Awards were announced at an industry gala dinner held in Tauranga in early May. More than 130 members of the various associations belonging to Metals NZ and the industry attended the dinner, held at the Classic Flyers Aircraft Museum.

The Keith Smith Award for Distinguished Service went to the director, chairman and part-owner of Hydraulink Fluidconnectors, Noel Davies. He was presented with a commemorative plaque and a cheque for $2,000 by the widow of the late Keith Smith, Jean Smith, who is still actively involved in running the engineering company that they built together, Mobridge Limited.

There were four nominations for the Metals NZ Exporter of the Year: Victory Knives, Grayson Engineering, Page Macrae Engineering and Southern Cross Engineering (SCE), and it was the latter’s new generation of grain stackers that triumphed. After successfully designing and manufacturing the grain stacker, SCE generated in its first year of production an export sales revenue equivalent to $ 25 million in 2012, with the potential of between $NZ 10-15-million per annum over the next five years. It has also added 50 skilled employees to its Canterbury-based workforce.  

Six companies were nominated for the Metals NZ Innovation Award – KIWIRail, MJH Engineering, Pacific Steel Group, South Auckland Forging Engineering (S.A.F.E.), Titanium Industry Development Association (TiDA) andSouthern Cross Engineering with its beat-all-comers grain stacker. But it was TiDA that took the prize for its ground-breaking research and development of what’s known in the industry as Powder Metallurgy Consolidation. TiDA has in the process become one of Australasia’s Titanium Powder Consolidation leaders.

High Density structural glazing tape provides thermal sealing for buildings

Pres-On, a leading supplier of adhesive industrial tapes and gaskets, has introduced a new HD (High Density) structural glazing tape for the cost-effective thermal sealing of storm windows and doors, curtain walls, and other building structures.

Available coated on one or both sides with a specially formulated acrylic adhesive, new SG6600/6700 Series HD structural glazing tapes bond instantly to vinyl, plastics, powder paints, bare metal, and glass, eliminating slippage and wasted production time. The long-lasting adhesive is water- and humidity-resistant, plus has a service temperature range up to 82°C.

The tapes are manufactured from high-strength, high-density open cell urethane tapes that resist fungi and oxidation to preserve the performance as well as the appearance of building structures. Tensile strength is an impressive 400psi, an excellent indicator of its ability to resist stress from stretching or pulling. Tear strength, as measured by the ASTM standard, is an equally impressive 40pli, providing customers with assurance that the tape will resist tearing after a tear has been started by the cutting or nicking of an edge.

Pres-On SG6400 tape is available in 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 5/16 or 3/8-inch thicknesses on rolls up to 50 feet in length. Custom widths, lengths and thickness can be ordered, as can die cuts for special applications requiring vibration and sound dampening.

Pres-On is a leading manufacturer of adhesive coating, coated foam tape, mounting substrates, gaskets and cap liners serving customers worldwide in the industrial and consumer markets.

The company is based in Addison, Illinois.

www.preson.com

Levelling the playing field

Commentary
By HERA industry development general manager Nick Inskip

Local industry is well used to contract conditions when tendering, and to the fact that the project owner will typically retain part of the payments due to the vendor as security against the proper completion of the work being undertaken. This is a cost factored into the price that local industry quotes when tendering.

It’s a cost of doing business in the New Zealand market that industry must accommodate and it is equally applied to all local tenders, so it’s usually accepted as fair and in that regard, local suppliers are competing on a level playing field.

Most of the major infrastructure projects in New Zealand are connected in some way to government, which isn’t a surprise since government makes up a large portion of our economy and you wouldn’t expect them to support any process that unfairly discriminated against New Zealand industry as suppliers on projects paid for with public money. However, the increasing trend for procurers to seek the ‘cheapest’ option has seen the development of some bumps in the playing field that would be quickly rolled flat if it was a cricket ground.

The problem comes from the fact that when procuring from offshore suppliers, there is no requirement placed on the foreign company to include the costs of retention monies in their tender price. This immediately gives them a cost advantage that rolls up into the price they quote, helping them undercut local suppliers. It also means that while a local supplier has every incentive not to cut corners and to make every effort to make sure their performance is up to standard so they get the retention monies paid to them, that kind of incentive isn’t there for foreign suppliers who typically require payment before shipping.

It also means that there is little opportunity for redress when a piece of equipment made offshore arrives and is found to be substandard. In fact, where initial price is seen as the major driver of procurement and where there are no perceived consequences, there is also the opportunity for an offshore procurer who realizes that they can trim the price they submit by omitting to do something which may not be readily apparent if inspected before shipment.

An example of this could be that they paint an item of plant in the open rather than in a climate-controlled environment, or only provide one coat instead of two of paint, or even undertake sandblasting to a standard lower than specified. These kinds of practices can reduce their costs and hence the price they submit, and with no consequences such as forfeiting retention monies, there is no incentive against cutting corners.

These risks are widely understood and many governments around the world put in place mechanisms to address them, such as requiring a completion bond from foreign suppliers to projects funded with public money. In practice this has the same effect as retention monies in providing an incentive to ensure corners are not cut and that foreign suppliers are not advantaged over local suppliers.

The issue becomes more complex where a government or government entity appoints a ‘prime contractor’ who does not require a cascading of completion bonds to foreign suppliers. In this case, however, the foreign supplier is immediately advantaged and any pretense of a level playing field disappears. It can be argued that the prime contractor accepts the risk, so there is no risk to government, but that isn’t the point. The point is that by omission of the requirement to cascade completion bonds to foreign suppliers, local industry is immediately discriminated against.

While this is probably not deliberate, it is a reality, as is the risk that with no consequences for a foreign supplier, they will cut corners which might not show up until the item supplied, is a few years old and unlike a local supplier, they have no local reputation at risk.

So we need Government and related entities to act now to flatten out the pitch and make sure the game is fair for local industry.

If you wish to comment on this piece, contact me at 09 262 4750 or email indev [at] hera [dot] org [dot] nz

International textile manufacturer launches lightweight second generation composite

Chomarat is launching TPreg: a continuous pre-impregnated thermoplastic reinforcement material, which was recognised for innovation in the thermoplastics category at the JEC awards in Paris this year.

TPreg is part of Chomarat’s C-PLY™ project Chomarat offers innovative solutions with TPreg, is a range of continuous thermoplastic pre-impregnated reinforcement. It is a light material, offers cost savings in large series production.

The TPreg range of products that complements the current OrganoSheet line, assembly of a continuous reinforcement and a thermoplastic resin. TPreg maintains Thermoplastic composites advantages: speed of conversion processes, little emission of volatile matter, thermoformability and recyclability

“TPreg is a conformable reinforcement that preserves perfect orientation of the fibres. It can be designed with a diversity of materials – carbon fibre, glass fibre and so on – and in different widths. With various impregnation levels in development, the range is suited to various production processes and opens up new technico-economic prospects for the market” says Chomarat R&D manager P Sanial.

“This new range finds applications in numerous sectors such as automotive or sports and leisure.”

Launched in 2011, the C-PLY Bi-Angle™ second-generation composites project under the leadership of Professor Tsai has demonstrated that an optimised design of composites makes it possible to obtain significant savings in weight (up to 30%).

Currently the working group is entering a new phase and is demonstrating that the use of C-PLY in a manufacturing phase with automated laying processes makes it possible to obtain productivity gains never obtained before.

Driven by its core values of creativity and innovation since 1898, CHOMARAT is an international textile group, which operates on four continents. The company is composed of three strategic business units: composites, textiles and fashion, incorporating over 25 different processes and manufacturing technologies.

www.chomarat.com

Printing the graphene way

Using an ink containing tiny graphene flakes, scientists have ink-jet printed graphene patterns that can be used for printing finely detailed, highly conductive electrodes.

Although ink-jet printing has been previously demonstrated, the graphene patterns in the new study are about 250 times more conductive than previous patterns.

The printed graphene ink is also highly tolerant to bending stresses, with the ability to withstand folding with only a slight decrease in conductivity.

The researchers, led by Ethan B Scott from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have published their study on inkjet-printing grapheme patterns in a recent issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

The researchers explain that inkjet printing is an attractive method of printing electronic components because it is low cost, can print large areas, and can print on flexible substrates, says Phys.org. Researchers have previously used inkjet printing to fabricate components such as transistors, solar cells, LEDs and sensors.

However, printing highly conductive electrodes is still a challenge because of the requirement for very fine resolution.

Recently, researchers have turned to grapheme due to its high conductivity, chemical stability, and intrinsic flexibility compared to other inks.

Major funding boost for titanium researchers

New Zealand’s titanium materials research has attracted a major investment that will enable the development of a pan-industry manufacturing base for high value export products, say programme participants.

Titanium Technologies New Zealand (TiTeNZ), funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), will provide a major boost to research activities with widespread national and international application across the medical, aerospace, defence, marine, energy and general engineering sectors.

The research collaboration has initial funding of $3.1 million per year for two years, but is aiming to establish a long term programme to support high value manufacturing based on titanium alloys.

TiTeNZ builds on current research capability and infrastructure in titanium metallurgy, high temperature materials processing and fabrication, and advanced surface coatings at Callaghan Innovation, GNS Science, the University of Waikato, the University of Auckland and the Titanium Industry Development Association (TiDA).

“This investment will enable the development of a world class titanium research platform in New Zealand and create a multi- company, multi-sector manufacturing base for high value export products,” says Professor Ian Brown of Callaghan Innovation who is leading a cluster of Crown Research Institutes and University applied materials research teams working in partnership with New Zealand industrial manufacturers.

Oversight of the new programme will be managed by an Industry Advisory Panel. Advisory Panel chair Jon Mayson says: “New Zealand has an amazing opportunity around the research and commercialisation of Titanium materials. We are currently at the leading edge internationally in some of our research.

“Our challenge is to ensure that our current position is converted to commercial opportunities for New Zealand businesses. This may involve collaborating globally in research, but the major focus must remain in ensuring economic outcomes for New Zealand through commercialisation.”