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Container tech company BISON this week launched the C-Lift P32, a new portable container lift system that equips shipping, logistics, and military operators to lift containers in any location. Recognising that conventional container handling equipment is typically big, heavy and expensive, BISON has developed a compact, portable and more economic alternative aimed at extending the benefits of intermodal logistics to new frontiers. The P32 is easily transported between sites, sets up in minutes and allows containers of all sizes and weights up to 32 tonne (70,000 lb) to be lifted on and off trailers safely and efficiently. Greg Fahey, BISON’s CEO, said:

“A big challenge if you want to lift containers outside of a freight hub is finding suitable equipment to do the job. So often, the size or weight of the container, space restrictions on site, or simply a lack of suitable equipment in the area, mean that cargo movements are compromised or costs are unreasonably high.”

BISON developed the P32 to solve this problem and sees the P32 as opening up a range of new possibilities for container freight and logistics. Users will be able to lift and ground containers more economically in factories or warehouses. This can allow container stuffing or unloading in better locations and ease the pressure of live loading and chassis detention costs.

Customers in remote locations, such as military, aid and project logistics operators can use the P32 to get containers in and out of remote locations more easily, avoiding reliance on local infrastructure. BISON is also fielding interest from construction and removals firms, wanting a mobile solution for delivering and collecting full containers at construction and urban sites.

A key part of the P32 design is BISON’s patent pending lift and lock mechanism, which reduces the size of the hydraulic system considerably, but still enables heavy containers to be elevated 1.65 metres off the ground. This in turn reduces the size, weight and cost of the system. Fahey continued: “The novelty of the P32 is its unique combination of portability, lift capacity and price. In these respects, it’s a world first for container handling equipment.”

The new product is the latest from BISON who’s container sales are now in use in over 25 countries. Notable customers include NASA, the US Airforce, Virgin Galactic and Emirates Team New Zealand.

BISON will be showcasing its newly developed C-Lift P32 at the IANA Intermodal EXPO in California and ntermodal Europe in Amsterdam this year.

| A  Handy Shipping Guide release  ||  August 11,  2017   |||

Christchurch’s Davinia Sutton and New Plymouth’s Glen Johns were the Supreme winners at the New Zealand’s kitchen and bathroom Excellence in Design Awards in Sydney tonight.

Johns won the National Kitchen and Bathroom Association (NKBA) best kitchen award and Sutton won best bathroom. The pair have led with outstanding NKBA awards between them in recent years.

Judges said Johns kitchen design offered sophisticated space with a juxtaposition of the warm wood and metal. They said the lighting provided an intimate feel and offered clever use of modern technology.

Johns says kitchens are such an integral part of the household, that it makes sense to also ensure they are a critical part of the architecture. Johns is renowned for his architectural approach to kitchen design.

He has been involved in the kitchen industry for 26 years. His company, Kitchens by Glen Johns, combines skills, passion and creativity of innovative design creating quality award winning kitchens, bathrooms, laundries and all other forms of cabinetry within a wide spectrum of briefs.

Supreme bathroom design winner Sutton found judges saying her design profiled ‘’a lovely composition of colours’’. They said her design was simple and stylish, minimal yet warm and comfortable. The design provided great storage and the detailing “is beautiful and elegant”.

Sutton, who won the same award last year, says she is passionate about interior architecture, from traditional to modern in style, my approach to each design is well thought out and highly considered.

Her company Detail by Davinia Sutton is a boutique design practice with a combined experience of over 25 years designing interiors, including kitchens, bathrooms, laundries, wardrobing, furniture, media rooms, storage solutions and outside living/BBQ zones.

In addition to the supreme kitchen and bathroom winners, there are over 30 other awards presented including regional awards and a student design award.

Winners came from Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Southland, Otago, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay.

Last year’s supreme kitchen design award winner Auckland designer Morgan Cronin was a judge this year. The awards are being held off shore for the first time so designers can attend the 2017 Sydney Indesign event this weekend.

As the country's top kitchen and bathroom designers presented the best of their work in the annual awards, it offered a litmus test of the latest trends, NKBA president Annemarie Mains says.

“We have been so excited about the beautiful and creative kitchen and bathroom designs of the New Zealand designers this year. NKBA designers are world class with such a high standard and quality manufacturing,” Mains says.

The awards are the longest standing kitchen and bathroom design Awards in New Zealand. This year’s awards are the 33rd for the NKBA, with Fisher & Paykel as the 2017 principal sponsor.

NKBA designers are leaders in the industry with many working not only within New Zealand but overseas as well, Mains says.

| A MakeLemonade release  ||  August 11,  2017   |||

Read the latest edition, August 10 2017, of the Machinery Market here

The Twin Shift mounts on the end of a flat handlebar, and automatically moves both derailleurs ...

It can be a tricky business, selecting the proper gear combinations on a dual-derailleur bike. You always want to avoid "cross-chaining," a situation in which the chain is stressed by being placed at too much of a lateral angle (such as if it were running from the outermost chainring to the innermost sprocket, or vice versa). French inventor Rolland Norbert is attempting to address the situation, with his Twin Shift.

The grip-style shifter mounts on the end of a flat handlebar. With a series of single click-twists, users can move up and down through the gears, as the Twin Shift automatically moves both the front and rear derailleurs accordingly. It does so entirely by mechanical means – no batteries are required.

Not only does it keep riders from cross-chaining, but it also means that they only have to shift once for each gear-change, as opposed to having to shift both the front and rear derailleurs separately.

Plans call for the system to be made in versions suited to 3x6, 3x7 and 3x8 drivetrains.

It is claimed to be compatible with most existing frames and components, and is currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign, where a pledge of €70 (about US$82) is required to get one. Assuming it reaches production, delivery is estimated for next June.

Prospective backers might additionally want to check out the Synchrobox system. And if they're willing to spend a bit more money and don't mind periodically recharging batteries, Shimano's XTR Di2 electronic shifting system also automatically shifts both derailleurs together.

| A  New Atlas release  ||  August 11,  2017   |||

Our panel takes the National Party election engine apart---and diagnoses a machine in full reverse thrust

 The National government has no more than a 50-50 chance now of winning the pending general election. This has come as a surprise and most of all to the National Party which is scrambling around its faithful to put together an 11th hour war chest to avert what many of its adherents are beginning to suspect is the inevitable. How did it all come to this? It seems only yesterday that the National government would go on and on and on….There was the almost monarchical transfer of power, the abdication of King John and the accession of the crown prince, now King William. What could go wrong? Simple. The National government’s formula of being all things to all people started to lose compression. Then this loss of impetus became obvious. The MSC Newswire panel now takes apart, disassembles, National’s election machine, the one supposed to drive it into power again. This reveals that the engine is sputtering just because so much National government policy is influenced by a category that does not vote for it. We now present in this exploded voting component presentation analysis the self-destructive path that the National Party insists on following, the one that favours those who do not vote for it, at the expense of its own voting blocs. This component bloc analysis is on an ascending order of sector significance.

Category 1: The IntelligentsiaThis is the sector which most preoccupies the National Party, yet which delivers it the least quantity of votes. We are talking here of the broad picture of social “science” centred on universities. This sector has the ability to make the National Party feel unfashionable. So the National Party constantly seeks the approval of this vote-arrid sector, often to the detriment of its own conservative base.

An example was when under the persuasion of the university lobby the National government university-ised crucial artisan and technical vocations. This had to be unpicked by Jim Anderton MP, he of the far left, and the trade apprenticeship courses re-instated and revved up.

This one-sided infatuation between the National Party and the intelligentsia elites continues still in several forms now in the run-up to the pending general election.

For example, the National government is paralysed in the matter of articulating in any clear fashion at all, the doctrines of global educational bodies, themselves university based, to the effect that money invested in early education delivers a value far in excess of the money invested in later education.

2. Administrative ClassThis is the category once described as white collar. They slog away doggedly keeping the nation on its course. We are talking here of those who work for institutions such as banks, insurance companies, utilities, and of course the government itself. This bloc has a problem. They are not very exciting and in this mediatic age this counts for a great deal. National governments take this sector pretty much for granted. What this category wants more than anything is stability.

Again, we find the National government in its preoccupation with the flashy and the fashionable elites quite unable to make the obvious gesture to this solid sector.

This should be to the effect that National governments personify stability and the once-much quoted “steady as she goes” way of politics.

National must make it clear to this sector that it recognises it – and will not be subjecting it to any sudden changes of the social engineering variety and which will de-stabilise it.

3. Self employedNew Zealand First’s Winston Peters MP has singled out this sector for special attention – and no wonder. National government’s treat this sector with a disdain bordering on snobbery. It refuses to acknowledge the immense contribution of this sector which generates in three dimensional and practical terms the prosperity of the country. We are talking here of people such as owner-drivers, plumbers, electricians, builders, butchers, bakers. Also, and this is not widely understood, IT people.

These solid, dependable types once again tend to be rather unexciting and so once more we find the National Party taking them pretty much for granted, or did so, until Mr Peters singled them out for his special attention.

One of the problems of this sector is that in expanding, or “growing” their businesses, they need to employ staff, and in doing so run the risk of incurring the immense distraction, not to say cost, of a disaffected employee and the litigation that they can invoke.

The National Party should clearly set out its record in streamlining hiring/firing and state unreservedly that it intends to introduce further such work place measures.

4. FarmersNational governments over the past 30 years have found it increasingly hard to adjust around this sector due to pervasive dairy farming, and more recently and to a much lesser extent, bio-farming.

As a voting bloc it has lost its significance to the National Party. Worse still, the National Party has let this show.

Who outside the sector can instantly recall for example the name of the Minister of Agriculture or the relevant departmental permanent heads?

This weakness too has been identified by New Zealand First’s Winston Peters who has cast himself as the true champion of this once clearly defined and identified backbone of the National Party.

Mr Peters has correctly drawn the conclusion that the National government’s constant compromising with the unproductive but noisy ideological factions has driven farmers to distraction, and thus alienationThis is quite simply the most cruel and the most dangerous cut that Mr Peters has ever delivered to the National Party of which he was once a loyalist.

How exactly does the National government explain why it has been so pliant with these ideologues, who have no intention of casting a vote in its direction in any shape or form?

Even at this late stage the National government must embark upon a strident, very noisy, old style tub-thumping campaign to remind its once key constituency of the way in which it has held firm in the face of so much ideological fear-mongering.

Two of these self-induced panics worth signalling might be Food Miles and the animal respiration/global warming syndrome.

5. The Professionals.This is the class from which National members of Parliament tend themselves to be recruited from. We are talking here of accountants, lawyers, company directors, medical doctors. The traditional boss class in other words. The National government badly needs to re-vitalise this base. The reason is that it is precisely this voter category that is now restless. It continues to vote National, certainly. But it will hedge.

This will take the form of tossing its spare vote to one of the other parties which however dotty it nonetheless views as being forthright, and thus decisive.

This category is in the business of making clear-cut decisions and across a wide swathe. It is becoming increasingly disaffected by the National government’s failure to do the same thing.

6. The TradersThis is the vocational category that loves the National Party and from which the National government will draw its largest single occupational vote haul. This sector is made up of those in occupations not particularly admired by the rest of the working population on the grounds that practitioners are amply rewarded for a minimal contribution to society, a contribution that in the view of many even has an entirely negative impact.

This is why the National Party in or out of office prefers to put some distance between it and this voter category, the only one it can truly rely upon in this pending general election.

We are talking here of course about real estate agents, property “investors” and the money dealers of various descriptions.

The reason they support National is that the National Party prefers to leave them alone in their counting rooms.

Even so, in the sea-change that has gripped politics in the Western world since the beginning of the last year, even this group cannot be relied upon to deliver its vote unprompted.

It is exactly for the benefit of this somewhat unloved category that the National government can deliver a daring policy. More importantly still, it can clearly state the reason for putting it forward. There is another benefit. It will not cost anyone a single cent.

The National government can announce that it will not introduce a capital gains tax. Ever.

Reason A. It is unenforceable and will merely create a wave of unproductive work for Category 2 and Category 5.

Reason B. Countries which have a capital gains tax, which means most OECD countries, have had far worse property bubbles than has had New Zealand.

Ireland is one such example. Britain and the United States are two others.

|  From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   ||  Friday 11 August 2017   |||

Who's ready to do some fishing with Jo Holley? You can fish for prizes in Rarotonga ... and raise funds for a great cause at the same time!

Join us in November this year for the inaugural Sportfishescapes & Heroworx fundraising sportfishing challenge.

This year it’s ‘Raro Busted & Bruised 2017’ - a week of great fishing in the fabulous Cook Islands and all for a worthy cause. The local Puaikura Volunteer Fire Brigade is currently looking to erect a new ‘Covered Parking Bay’ for its fire appliance so join us in November and let’s help raise some funds for this worthy volunteer organisation.

To obtain further details or register your fishing team for ‘Raro Busted & Bruised 2017’ contact Peter Barry on email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call on 021 434 220.

Christchurch urologist Stu Gowland, who developed the country’s first mobile surgical bus, is stepping down as Mobile Health’s managing director but will be continuing as medical director.

Mark Eager, has been appointed as chief executive of Mobile Health. Mark has been with the surgical bus organisation for 10 years.

Gowland, a real Kiwi medical pioneer, was a founding member of the New Zealand Urology Associates.

He campaigned with others for improved health on various issues at Christchurch hospital in the 1990s and was the driving force to set up New Zealand’s first mobile surgical unit 15 years ago, board chair Keith Smith says.

“Stu, with colleagues, starting the planning of the surgical bus on a marked-out lawn and 15 years on the bus has performed more than 21,500 procedures all over New Zealand. So much of the credit goes to Stu’s vision, foresight and medical knowledge. Many Kiwis in rural areas are very grateful to him.

“He has been recognised in the New Year’s Honours list with a Queens Service Order (QSO) and by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons for his exceptional contribution to rural health with their Outstanding Services to the Community Award.”

he mobile operating theatre was built to enable free access to low-risk elective day surgery for rural New Zealanders. Today the surgical bus regularly visits 23 small towns and community areas around New Zealand.

Gowland established the first mobile kidney stone treatment (lithotriptsy) service in 1995 providing a nationwide, non-invasive treatment using focussed sound waves for kidney stones. To date about 12,000 patients have been treated with this world wide used technology.

The surgical unit runs on a five-week rotation system around New Zealand, carrying out operations over a day at Kaikohe, Dargaville, Warkworth, Pukekohe, Te Puia, Wairoa, Taumarunui, Waipukurau, Taihape, Hawera, Levin, Dannevirke, Kapiti, Featherston, Takaka, Motueka, Buller, Waikari, Rangiora, Oamaru, Clyde, Queenstown, Balclutha and Gore.

A makeLemonade/Mobile Health release  ||  August 10,  2017   |||

One of New Zealand’s fastest rising consumer production companies, The Pure Food Co, is about to take off as it has opened a massive new manufacturing facility in Auckland.

The Pure Food Co, rated one of the rising stars in the latest Deloitte Fast 50 Index, had taken control of its business by ramping up opportunities after building their own production plant in Mt Wellington.

Pure Food founders Sam Bridgewater and Maia Royal have spent the last three years growing their food business at Auckland’s food innovation incubator The FoodBowl.

They had reached the point where they had enough investment to build their own 600 plus square metre manufacturing facility to fulfil their goal of supplying every hospital and aged care facility with high quality pureed food with clinical benefits.

The FoodBowl accelerates or incubates clients’ progress so they can develop and prove their worth to investors to back them to build a new plant so they can start their own independent production.

Pure Food produced pureed food predominately for the growing elderly population, or anyone in need of better nutrition. Bridgewater says the new factory is future-proofed so they can grow about 15 times without needing to move. This will allow them to expand throughout the rest of New Zealand and start to explore export markets.

With support from partners, Bridgewater and Royal established The Pure Food Co after watching a family member suffer from swallowing difficulties. The business is a personal quest to bring food to people with eating difficulties, providing meals into the aged and healthcare industry nationwide.

To begin with, Bridgewater and Royal didn’t have the technology and manufacturing skills to produce their texture modified products, so the FoodBowl was the perfect first step for them to trial and iterate development of their products.

“We started in a small room to get proof of concept and samples in the market then jumped up to a large room doing multiple 700kg batches as the demand grew, eventually getting to 2 tonne per day. The FoodBowl helped by bringing in new bits of equipment for us to trial and scale up with,” Bridgewater says.

“The benefit was a wide range of technologies under one roof for us to assess within our production line. It meant we didn’t have to spend a lot of money on pieces of equipment that we might not actually need down the line.

“Being under constant scrutiny from The FoodBowl pushed us to take it to the next level. We now have successfully commissioned a new plant within time and budget that exceeds MPI’s regulatory standards.

“We couldn’t have done things as fast without the assistance of The FoodBowl. They have introduced us to some of our suppliers like our packaging and machinery that we are working with now in our new factory. It was a perfect stepping stone for us and drove us to reach new standards and scale to ensure we were well equipped to make that leap out on to our own.”

The Pure Food Co is now providing close to 40,000 meals a month and has landed large clients such as Ryman and Compass group who caterer to hospitals.

|  A MakeLemonade Pure Food Co release  ||  August 9,  2017   |||

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is a whole new class of aircraft carrier. Officially commissioned by the U.S. Navy and Newport News Ship Building Company, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier represents the first major redesign to a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in over four decades.

When a warship is commissioned, it is legitimized under law, and placed in active service for the first time. Replacing what was known as the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers, the USS Ford will spend its first four years under scrutiny as builder’s sea trials get underway.

The trials test crucial systems and technologies aboard the ship, and will cost USD $780 million on top of its USD $12.9 billion manufacturing price tag. There were delays and overruns because of the complicated task of integrating whole new systems and an entirely new class of technology aboard the ship, which was originally supposed to be completed in 2015 for USD $10.5 billion.

Designing a new class of aircraft carrier means that expectations for improved performance are going to be set extremely high, and you’ll see that the features of the USS Ford make it a true marvel of modern weapons engineering.

Interestingly, the USS Ford also appears to be a minor milestone moment for 3D modeling technology, because this is the first ship to be fully designed as a 3D model. The USS Ford has its own nuclear plant inside of it, which generates a consistent and high enough rate of energy that affords the vessel a top speed of 30 knots (34.5 mph, 55.5 km/h).

Nuclear warships like the USS Ford are designed to be fully autonomous. The amount of nuclear energy produced by the USS Ford means that it could run without stopping to refuel for 20-25 years.

Nuclear Upgrade

There are two A1B reactor plants (“A” is for Aircraft Carrier, “1” is first-generation, and “B” is for Bechtel, the manufacturer) aboard the USS Ford, and they were specially developed by Bechtel for the new class of supercarrier. Bechtel normally handles engineering and construction for nuclear plants in the USA.

The A1B generates almost 3 times as much power as the A4W reactor plants on the active Nimitz-class carriers. The exact number is classified, but estimates have been made that the total increase in energy is 700 MW.

Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) Versus Steam Catapult System

The US Navy began experimenting with the design and production of a launch system that uses linear induction motors and electromagnets instead of steam-powered turbines because engineers realized that you could improve three things: eliminate the need for housing a separate steam boiler, increase the level of control during jet or drone takeoffs, and reduce the amount of maintenance in two ways—using solid state components and reducing wear and tear on the supercarrier from repeated launches.

Continue to view video, images and the full article on Engineering.com   |  August 10, 2017   |||