Niche manufacturing

If your idea of manufacturing depends on innovation, precision and bespoke design, you should look at making Auckland home. Especially if that involves short-run development and build, and the design and manufacture of very high value equipment. It shows in Auckland’s strengths in areas like:

machinery and equipment
metal products
chemical products.

Food-world leadership

In the past, a lot of Auckland’s manufacturing served the rural sector or its value chains. It’s an area of expertise that Auckland retains – in harvesting machines, seed drillers or automated fruit and vegetable pickers – but the skill base is wider now.

You’ll find it in automated machinery for things like fruit grading or food packing. The agricultural connection is also evident in machinery that can be environmentally sealed for food processing, and in foodstuff manufacture, food ingredients, extracts, beverages and specialized compounds for the nutraceutical industry.

Historical advantage

It doesn’t take much knowledge of New Zealand history to know how essential conveyers for mines, hydraulic weighing systems and specialised log-harvesting machinery have been. Their 21st Century derivations are now exported worldwide from Auckland.

High-tech health

Combine New Zealand’s long-established leadership in food technology with the recent growth in bioscience and you’ll find the roots of Auckland’s success in medical manufacturing. Examples include medical grade ophthalmology and imaging machinery, sleep apnoea management equipment or incubators.

The leading edge of precision

The depth of Auckland’s expertise in precision-critical industries like food technology and medicine has influenced the growth of other precision technologies in the region. Auckland is a major manufacturing centre for telemetry crystal design materials for GPS oscillators and the aerospace industries, for example.

Niche manufacturers such as Howick Ltd, Rakon, RPM International Tool and Die, Glidepath, Framecad, Actronic and Buckley Systems Ltd are based here.