Founded by Max Farndale 1947 - 2018
Diverseco, Australia's leading integrated measurement, packaging and product inspection solutions provider, is delighted to announce the acquisition of Robot Technologies/Systems Australia (RTA).
RTA is Australia’s foremost integrator of robotic automation, with over thirty years of experience and expertise in industrial robotics, manufacturing automation, process automation and factory automation.
The company supplies and services robotics equipment for businesses within a broad range of industries across Australia and New Zealand. These include manufacturing, mining, commodity handling, defence and pharmaceutical.
The company’s suppliers include leading brands Kawasaki, Staubli, Kyokutoh, Servo-Robot, Nitta and Pro-face, with RTA currently providing applications for material handling, sorting, machine unloading, fluid application, painting and welding, among others.
Established in 1986, the company’s operations were initially based on supply of robotics to the automotive industry and with RTA being the sole supplier of robots and associated services to Mitsubishi and Toyota.
Brenton Cunningham, Diverseco CEO said, “RTA is a valuable addition to our group, and will complement and enhance our group’s current capabilities, especially our supply of solutions to the manufacturing, packaging equipment and freight sector.”
Trinton Smith, RTA General Manager is confident that the purchase heralds a new era for the company, at a time when the manufacturing industry is undergoing a technological renaissance that is transforming operations.
“With Diverseco’s financial backing, corporate support and vision, we are excited about future opportunities and realising RTA’s full potential - as the go-to company for any business seeking sophisticated robotic automation solutions,” Trinton said.
“The fact is, far too many Australian companies remain unaware of how automation technologies can enable them to realise their productive potential by optimising their operations,” he added.
“Today, most industrial tasks can be automated with a diverse range of robots, far more than most people realise. In some respects, it’s matter of imagination that requires business leaders to envision what ‘can be’ rather than ‘what is.’ Once a company discovers the benefits provided by robotic integration in one part of their business, they are always keen to apply it to another.” Brenton said.
The robotics automation industry remains in a growth phase. For example, the Association for Advancing Automation in the U.S. reports that over fourteen thousand robots, valued at approximately $817 million, were ordered from North American companies in the first half of 2016. This is a new record.
Brenton said, “Manufacturing companies cannot afford to ignore the economic and competitive benefits provided by robotics advances. By embracing them now, they will improve productivity, forge ahead of their rivals and gain an edge with customers who are seeking their own gains in the supply chain..”
Brenton said, “Many of RTA’s core competencies reside in its people, many of whom are recognised experts in their fields, which includes mechatronics engineering. Consequently, we are delighted to have retained their experienced staff and contractors.”
RTA founder, industry legend Doug Smith will remain at the company and will be responsible for managing some key areas for the foreseeable future.
RTA will be closely aligned with another Diverseco company, Scaco Pty Ltd, due to similarities in their automation operations. Consequently, Group General Manager Tim Francis is tasked with overseeing both of these operations.
“The RTA team are second to none in their ability to optimise manufacturing processes across a multitude of industries by incorporating automation and robotics into company operations,” Tim said.
‘They are a great group of people! I’m certain that will embrace the Diverseco’s core values, contribute to our company culture and will continue to provide RTA customers world-class robotics solutions,’ he added.
To celebrate the acquisition, Brenton Cunningham and Doug Smith were recently invited to visit Kawasaki Robots Head Office in Akashi, Japan, where they were entertained by the senior management, provided a tour of facilities, and briefed of Kawasaki’s latest innovations. They are pictured shaking hands with Shin-ichi Hada, Senior Manager at Kawasaki Robotics.
Matthew Weake is a valuable member of CADPRO System's Autodesk training and support team. In regular conatct with operators he is in the unique position of being able to identify those procedures that require a little more attention - creating drawings in Autodesk Fabrication ESTmep and CAMduct is one of them.
Here is an article that has been prepared by Matthew and can be accessed in full on the CADPRO Systems website
Creating drawings in Autodesk Fabrication ESTmep and CAMduct is not the most intuitive or CAD-like experience so I thought I would share a few tips here to get you started.
Setup Report Printer
When designing your reports, you may find you use up lots of paper only to find the report is not quite right.
A useful tip here is to add a pdf printer as your report printer until you have the Report looking like you want. This will save paper and many trips to the printer.
Most printers can be made to print black and white as default and the options can be found in the printer setup dialog box. Try the awesome Bluebeam Revu CAD – it does a lot more than just creating great pdf’s. Bluebeam Revu
Add Layouts
To create drawings in Autodesk Fabrication ESTmep of a selection of items you should add a layout with those items in it.
Most of us have seen the Global Tab at the bottom of the page but paid no notice to it. It is, in fact, the second tip here. You should add your own Layout Tab and give it a short meaningful name. My example uses really good names – test and test2!
The future of manufacturing has always been a topic of much discussion and debate. In a rapidly changing economic and technological environment, this future may be more volatile and hard to predict, but bring with it greater opportunities for those who adapt and lead.
Despite recent improvements in confidence and sentiment in the manufacturing sector, many of our members are quite uncertain about future orders, both in the short and long term. Is this part of a current crisis or part of a new and developing economic reality for manufacturers in New Zealand?
Globalisation comes with many benefits; allowing our manufacturers to get over the problems of distance and a small domestic market. On the downside, volatility has increased through greater exposure to conditions and competition in overseas markets, global commodity cycles, and even larger currency fluctuations; due to financial liberalisation and larger monetary flows, particularly with the large global stimulus (a.k.a. printing of money) following the Global Financial Crisis.
This increasing exposure to global markets, paired with ever improving communication technology, means changes in markets can quickly affect demand and prices for our exporters, and allow purchasers to easily find a more competitive supplier if we can’t keep up. These changing dynamics could explain some of the increased volatility manufacturers have continued to experience – trends that are likely to continue and potentially accelerate, particularly around the use of new manufacturing technologies, and represent significant challenges as well as opportunities for our manufacturers in the future.
Looking forward, the coming wave of technology-led disruption has been referred to as “Industry 4.0”. Industry 4.0 is described in a recent report on manufacturing by McKinsey & Company, saying "we define Industry 4.0 as the next phase in the digitisation of the manufacturing sector, driven by four disruptions: the astonishing rise in data volumes, computational power, and connectivity, especially new low-power wide-area networks; the emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities; new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems; and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3-D printing.”
These advancements will affect different sub-sectors of manufacturing in different ways. For many manufacturers, this may mean increased use of more advanced and adaptive robots, and increased use of real-time data to analyse production systems and more complex supply chains across different firms. This could lead to huge increases in productivity and potentially make production processes more adaptive and customisable for making multiple products. Given that being highly responsive in terms of volumes and delivery times has become a big part of the value proposition for a lot of our manufacturers, does the increased flexibility awarded by new manufacturing technologies pose a big threat to our manufacturers? It could do – but it should also equip New Zealand manufacturers with the tools to get much better at something they excel at already.
It is impossible to predict how exactly all these changing technologies will effect manufacturing businesses and global markets - whether it will be a revolution in how manufacturing is done, or just a continuation of current trends. But we do know many of these technologies are being used in some manufacturing operations already, and will become more widely used in the next five to ten years. We will all need to prepare for this, first and foremost by being aware of the potential changes that will affect your business, and starting to plan and invest in them early. Investing will be essential both in the technology and systems required, but more importantly in your staff through training and recruitment, as a new and changing mix of skills will be needed.
As well as individual manufacturers preparing for these changes, government also has a big role to play. Firstly through education, ensuring modern skill requirements are focused on throughout our education system, and providing opportunities for people to retrain and develop new skills. A longer term view of education will be needed, as new skills take time to work through the system. Secondly, there may be areas in which the government can invest to encourage the uptake of new technologies, particularly where up-front cost is large, as well as incentivisingbusinesses to conduct R&D to stay ahead.
Technology change in manufacturing will have ramifications for jobs and workers. It is true some lower level jobs may be replaced by advanced robots. But these new technologies will also create new jobs that are more highly paid and require a new, more adaptive skill set. These jobs require a mix of production knowledge and IT skills to make full use of even more automated systems.
This continual adaption and development of technology may well mean that market volatility is indeed the new normal for businesses operating on the world stage. Continued volatility coupled with technological disruptions may mean many manufacturers need to revisit and adapt their business models as time goes on. But in the mean time, the most important thing is trying to be aware of the potential changes to your businesses, prepare, and invest early.
New Zealand has enjoyed good growth in average income since the global financial crisis. Labour participation is strong and our public finances are in relatively good shape. But one area holding the economy back is our persistently weak labour productivity, with the OECD estimating that New Zealand had the fourth lowest labour productivity growth of OECD countries between 1995 and 2014.
Fortunately New Zealand is in a good position to address this area of persistent weakness.
Achieving New Zealand’s productivity potential is the Productivity Commission’s commentary on New Zealand’s productivity performance. The report shows that New Zealand needs to shift from a model based on working more hours per person to one that is focused on generating more value from time spent at work. “With labour force participation forecast to decline with population ageing, the focus now needs to go on lifting productivity” says Paul Conway, Director of Economics and Research at the Productivity Commission.
The report draws on powerful new data (the Longitudinal Business Database) to provide a fresh and practical insight on New Zealand’s productivity performance.
“There is a view that some businesses stop growing once the owners achieve ‘the three Bs – a bach, boat and BMW’. But new evidence means we can look beyond this and better understand what in the business environment is holding back some Kiwi firms. We can measure the impact of small domestic markets, low levels of competition in services, and the role of barriers to export success, like market knowledge and financing.” says Mr Conway.
With technology creating new opportunities for small and remotely-located firms, an important challenge is to improve the flexibility and resilience of the economy to make the most of important changes in the global economy. The Government has implemented a Business Growth Agenda (BGA) with the aim of building a more productive and competitive economy. The report’s analysis shows that the BGA is targeting the right areas.
“The BGA is subject to annual review. This means that it can respond and evolve as knowledge of the New Zealand economy deepens. Our report gives the Government further insight into why our productivity performance is not as good as it could be and informs possible changes to the BGA that could make a difference” says Mr Conway.
The report highlights several areas for further work, including housing market reform so that people can live where their skills are most valued, and lifting the skill composition of migrants. The report also emphasises practical measures to lift competition in the services sector. Connections across the innovation system could also be strengthened, and the Foreign Direct Investment regime and remaining tariffs need review in the context of growing international trade in services and digital products.
Vp plc, the equipment rental specialist, today announces the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of TechRentals NZ Ltd ("TRNZ") for a cash consideration of NZ$2.592 million (New Zealand dollars).
TRNZ is engaged in the specialist rental of test & measurement equipment and calibration services in New Zealand.� The business, which has been established for over 30 years, currently operates from a single location in Auckland, New Zealand.
In April 2016, Vp plc announced the acquisition of TR Pty Ltd ("TR"), also engaged in the specialist rental of test & measurement equipment and provider of calibration services in Australia and Malaysia.
TRNZ used to be part of the TR group of companies but was disposed of under previous ownership in 2009.� The TRNZ business will operate within the wide TR group of businesses which have existing activities in Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.
Jeremy Pilkington, Chairman of Vp plc, commented:
"We are delighted to welcome the experienced TRNZ back to the TR Group and also to the wider team at Vp.� The acquisition of TRNZ further increases the TR Group's exposure to the healthy New Zealand market."
About
Vp plc is a specialist rental business providing products and services to a diverse range of markets including infrastructure, construction, housebuilding and oil and gas, both in the UK and overseas.
The Group comprises a UK and an International division:
UK
Groundforce -Excavation support systems and specialist products for the water, civil engineering and construction industries primarily in the UK, but also in the Republic of Ireland and mainland
Europe.
Hire Station - Tools and specialist products for industry, construction and home owners.
Torrent Trackside - Infrastructure equipment and services for the railway renewals and maintenance industry.
TPA - Portable roadway access solutions to the transmission, outdoor events, construction and utility sectors in the UK, the Republic of Ireland and mainland Europe.
UK Forks - Rough terrain material handling equipment and tracked access platforms for the housebuilding, general construction and industrial markets.
International
Airpac Bukom Oilfield Services - Equipment and service providers to the international oil and gas exploration and development markets.
TR Group - Specialist rental of test & measurement, communications and audio visual equipment to a breadth of markets including electrical, telecommunications, manufacturing, construction, defence, oil and gas, mining, and government in Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.
Further information is available at www.vpplc.com/investors
Food Safety Minister Jo Goodhew is welcoming progress on improving food labelling, including consistent labelling of added fats and oils that are high in saturated fatty acids.
“As Food Safety Minister my priority for New Zealand consumers is food safety and public health. For nutrition purposes, the labelling of high saturated oils like palm oil and coconut oil should be consistent with New Zealand and Australia’s dietary guidelines. I made New Zealand’s position clear at today’s meeting of the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation,” Mrs Goodhew says.
The Forum discussed Recommendation 12, which states that where the terms “added fats” and “added vegetable oils” are used in the ingredient list of a food, they should be followed by a bracketed list describing the source of the fat or oil, for example: added vegetable oils (“sunflower oil, palm oil”).
“This recommendation addresses health concerns about high saturated fats contained in some oils and provides consistency with New Zealand’s dietary guidelines.”
The Forum has a framework that it applies when developing food labelling policy. This framework is underpinned by an issues hierarchy. The hierarchy means that mandatory labelling applies for food safety and preventative health reasons, and voluntary labelling for consumer values.
“The Forum agreed that Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), in consultation with the Food Regulation Standing Committee, should prepare a programme of work that will address this and to present this at the next Forum meeting in April 2017.
“This programme of work will further investigate labelling approaches, for providing information on sugars and added fats/vegetables oils, as separate issues.
“New Zealand officials will lead policy work with the intention of identifying next steps in relation to naming sources of fats and oils to support consumers to make informed choices, consistent with the Australian and New Zealand dietary guidelines,” says Mrs Goodhew.
The communique is available HERE, and more information about the Forum activity is available at www.foodregulation.gov.au.
Volkswagen AG (IW 1000/8) reached a landmark agreement with workers to cut as many as 30,000 jobs globally and save 3.7 billion euros (US$3.9 billion) in expenses as the company tries to claw back from the emissions-cheating scandal and invest in electric vehicles.
Reducing headcount by nearly 5% will come through attrition as the automaker agreed to refrain from forced layoffs until 2025, the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said Friday. After months of intense talks, labor and management agreed on a package to balance cost-cutting with investment as the auto industry shifts away from traditional combustion engines and adapts to car-sharing services and self-driving technologies.
“This is a big step forward, maybe the biggest in the company’s history,” VW brand chief Herbert Diess said at a press conference in Wolfsburg. “All manufacturers must rebuild themselves because of the imminent changes for the industry. We need to brace for the storm.”
The government is updating copyright regulations to ensure the Copyright Act 1994 full takes account of New Zealand international copyright obligations, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith.
“When a foreign work is protected by copyright in New Zealand, it is protected because of international agreements to which New Zealand is a party to. Our Copyright Act needs updating from time to time to ensure continuity with our international obligations,” says Mr Goldsmith.
Amendments to the Copyright (Application to Other Countries) Order 1995 (the Order) will provide nationals of countries who have recently joined the World Trade Organization, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Universal Copyright Treaty with copyright protection in New Zealand.
“A significant number of new countries have joined one or more of these agreements since the Order was last updated in 2000.
“At the same time, amendments to the Order will help ensure New Zealand’s creative community of copyright owners receive reciprocal protection in these countries,” says Mr Goldsmith.
The update also includes some minor technical amendments to bring the language of regulations into line with changes previously made to the Copyright Act through the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008.
The regulation update takes effect 1 January 2017.
WELLINGTON， Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand exports to South Korea have grown strongly since the two countries implemented a bilateral free trade agreement in December last year， Trade Minister Todd McClay said Tuesday.
In the first nine months since entry into force of the New Zealand-Korea Free Trade Agreement， food and beverage exports to South Korea rose 16 percent to 449 million NZ dollars (317.17 million U.S. dollars) compared to the same period a year earlier， McClay said in a statement ahead of the first anniversary of the agreement.
"Those products where tariffs have been eliminated immediately have fared extremely well，" said McClay.
Exports of New Zealand cherries to Korea， for example， which previously had a tariff of 24 percent， have more than doubled (221 percent) to 4.3 million NZ dollars (3.04 million U.S. dollars) between January and the end of September while New Zealand wine exports rose 28 percent to 1.9 million NZ dollars (1.34 million U.S. dollars) following the removal of a 15 percent tariff.
Butter exports were up 150 percent to 12 million NZ dollars (8.48 million U.S. dollars) and cheese exports were up 13 percent to 58 million NZ dollars (40.99 million U.S. dollars).
"There has also been significant improvement in export items where tariffs will be removed over time，" said McClay.
The value of New Zealand's substantial kiwifruit exports to Korea have grown 18 percent so far this year to reach 65 million NZ dollars (45.94 million U.S. dollars). Avocados are up 39 percent， meat extracts for food preparations up 62 percent， and deer velvet up 81 percent， he said.
Many exporters can look forward to further improvements to their products' competitiveness in the Korean market when the third round of tariff cuts under the FTA (free trade agreement) takes place on Jan. 1， 2017， the minister said.
In the year ending September， South Korea was New Zealand's sixth largest goods export market worth 1.5 billion NZ dollars (1.06 million U.S. dollars).
SAN JOSE, Calif. and SYDNEY, May 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NETSUITE SUITEWORLD 2016 -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that Mons Royale, a global apparel manufacturer and wholesaler of high performance merino clothing has deployed NetSuite OneWorld for business efficiency and growth. Mons Royale is using NetSuite OneWorld for financial consolidation, inventory management, multi-currency for AUD, NZD, Euro, Swiss Franc and Japanese Yen and multi-language support for English, French, Swiss, Norwegian and Japanese, and tax compliance across its head office in New Zealand and seven subsidiaries in Canada, the US, France, Switzerland, Norway, Japan and Australia. With NetSuite OneWorld, Mons Royale has a single source of truth in real-time for the very first time, facilitating more accurate and strategic decision making, as well as impressive cost and time savings.
Founded in New Zealand in 2009 by a professional skier and his wife looking for a more stylish alternative to the traditional technical merino base layers, Mons Royale began shipping international orders during its first year of business. Today, Mons Royale is available in stores across North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, as well as direct to consumers online. As a result of its global growth, Mons Royale struggled to capture real-time insights in order to make informed business decisions.
After a thorough evaluation process that included SAP and Salesforce, Mons Royale selected NetSuite OneWorld for its rapid deployment, powerful customisation and integration platform and its global scalability. With NetSuite OneWorld, Mons Royale has replaced a number of manual processes, allowing personnel to focus on more strategic tasks to grow the business. Furthermore, NetSuite OneWorld's ability to log any currency or stock changes automatically saved its finance staff up to 10 hours a week, where previously these changes had to be logged manually across disparate systems.
Global inventory management is also much more seamless and automated. Inventory can easily be moved around the world, with NetSuite OneWorld automatically recording these inter-company transactions and providing a real-time view of global inventory. Although headquartered in Wanaka in New Zealand, Mons Royale has a substantial global footprint, including manufacturing in China, 20 warehouse locations globally, physical offices in Austria, Switzerland and New Zealand plus multiple shipping locations in key markets around the world. From this footprint, Mons Royal distributes its product to 450 retail locations with NetSuite OneWorld tracking all inventory movement worldwide in real-time.
Ben Irving, Chief Operating Officer at Mons Royale said, "The business benefits delivered by NetSuite OneWorld have been transformational for Mons Royale. As a growing business, we really needed a sophisticated ERP platform to help us introduce more efficient business processes, as well as help manage the complexity associated with a global business, trading in multiple geographies, languages and currencies. For the first time we have a single source of truth available from our headquarters in New Zealand, which enables us to make more strategic business decisions, as well as deploy our most valuable resources on growing the business, versus back office business administration."
NetSuite OneWorld supports 190 currencies, 20 languages and automated tax compliance in more than 100 countries, and transaction in more than 200 countries. With NetSuite OneWorld Mons Royale can experience benefits including:
Today, more than 30,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of cloud-based financials/enterprise resource planning (ERP) and omnichannel commerce software applications for businesses of all sizes. Many FORTUNE 100 companies rely on NetSuite to accelerate innovation and business transformation. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud business management software to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.
For more information about NetSuite please visit www.netsuite.com.au.
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
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