Mr Quarryman

The only thing missing from the interview was a couple of cold beers, but there was no shortage of tales coming forth from Keith Niederer – a.k.a. Mr Quarryman.   By ALAN TITCHALL.

The last time the magazine spoke to Keith Niederer he was seven years younger and thinking of retirement.  I’m just about to raise the subject of retirement again when his cellphone rings.

It’s not exactly an animated phone correspondence, but I do pick up the part when he says – ‘yes we can do that’.

“Alaska,” he says quietly.

Was that Sarah Palin? I’m tempted to ask, knowing his long reputation as the industry’s ‘ladies man’.

When the conversation gets back to retirement Niederer mentions he had recently celebrated a birthday, but doesn’t want his age published, suffice to add that amount of industry history this gentleman carries around in his head would need a thick book to do it justice.

It started in Invercargill working as a heavy machinery salesman, just as war broke out in 1939. How fitting he should end up fulfilling his war service flying heaviest single engine aircraft of World War II – the Grumman TBF Avenger made by General Motors as a torpedo bomber for the US Navy.

It was the first aircraft design to feature a wing-folding mechanism to maximise storage space on an aircraft carrier and was also used by the Royal Naval Air Service and New Zealand Air Force. It had three crew members – a pilot (front), turret gunner (rear), and radioman/bombardier (in the middle). It had a huge bomb bay that could carry one torpedo or a single 2000 lb (900kg) bomb, or up to four 500 lb (230 kg) bombs. Although rugged and docile, its massive 2000HP engine flew it through the air like a truck. Post war Avengers pioneered aerial top dressing in

New Zealand after the war, and the odd one is still used in the US as a water bomber to put out fires. 

As an Avenger flyer, Niederer was in good company. Ex US president George HW Bush flew one (earning a Distinguished Flying Cross), and actor Paul Newman was a rear gunner during the Pacific campaign.

Niederer flew mission off both British and US aircraft carriers during the Pacific campaign.  Did he have any close calls?

“All the time. You would land on the carrier deck and the bloody hook could pull out, or you could miss the [catcher] wire. I only ever ended up in the safety barrier once on the carrier Victorious when the hooked pulled out. The engine had to be changed but the aircraft was put back together.”

Dealing with heavy machinery and adventurous encounters has been the story of his life, and Niederer still operates an engineering workshop with four employees at Otahuhu, supplying crushers and parts around the Pacific region.

“We’ve got about $500,000 of work on at the moment. A lot of old customers keep in touch with us.”

After the war Niederer rejoined the engineering firm Boothmac, a Kiwi agency for construction machinery and crushers, first back in Invercargill (he was born and raised in Southland) and later in Palmerston North, Hamilton, Hawkes Bay, and finally Auckland where he has lived since 1956.

It was around this time that he started building and selling his own quarry machinery and operating drilling rigs. Niederer Machinery did well importing crushers from the UK and the US and putting them on frames for resale as mobile crushers.

“We are still doing it – importing them from China now and make them into portables,” he says.

The engineering company will be best remembered for its association with the famous Barmac crushers, invented in the 1970s and still manufactured in Matamata. Niederer had secured a licence to build the vertical shafted Barmac machine in 1972 that crushed rock on rock and says the first designs didn’t need much modification to be a commercial success, “it went pretty good from day one”. 

There were other vertical shaft crushers working on the centrifugal principle with a vertical spindle fitted with an impellor or shoes that throw material against a wall of chrome alloy breaker plates, but the rotor in the Barmac throws stone against stone trapped against the outer casing.

“I sold two to Stevensons in 1973. Sir William Stevenson rang me at 7am. ‘Niederer, I’m enquiring about one of those Hammer Mills without the hammers,’ he said. He later ordered two at $9000 each, disappeared out of the office and came back with his office lady who asked ‘what name do we put on the cheque’. That’s how quick he paid.”

Niederer machinery sent the first Barmac to UK (Foster Yeoman) in 1979 where it replaced a Hazemag Hammermill that was costing $8 per tonne of product. The Barmac did it for 12 cents a tonne.

The first Barmac sold to the US was used in Texas to crush air-cooled copper slag, replacing a better known vertical impactor with huge savings to the operator on.  Other installation in the US replaced cage and hammer mills where costs were reduced from US$.80 cents per tonne to five cents, recalls Niederer.  Two Barmacs sold to a quarry in South Africa almost 30 years ago are still working, he says, reiterating the durability of the machine.

Niederer was introduced to Paul Tidmarsh by a partner who had half share of a quarry in Matamata.

“While we still sold the machine, we could have continued to make a lot of money by manufacturing them as well, but it was economical to have them built in Matamata.”

There was other quarry machinery as well. Niederer Machinery produced over 250 Aussie-designed Kumbee Hammer Mills have been made at the workshop and sold to South America, the Middle East and Africa. One sold to the UK 20 years ago is still in use in the Shetland Islands.

Niederer recalls some of the more serendipitous sales moments. On a flight from New York to London the airline stuffed up his ticket and upgraded him to First Class. His accent attracted the curiosity of his aloof neighbour.

“This fellow turned out to be a top oil executive and his oil company was thinking of making concrete pylons for oils rig in the North Sea instead of the usual steel. I got a call from Norway one day for a Barmac.”

A fat suitcase full of travel tales from three decades includes many social observations on other cultures.

In 1990 he was taken to Cambodia by a couple of Aussie consultants to the World Bank to quote on crushing equipment for a quarry. A crumpled and faded picture is placed on the table showing a long line of women walking single file, each carrying a rock.

“The stone was being hacked out by women using crowbars, carted by hand and crushed with hammers. They were getting just $2 a week, yet were more concerned at losing their jobs if the quarry was modernised,” he recalls

Socialising with the contractors at a Cambodian bar he donated to the plight of the country’s workers. One of the bar girls told him she earned $2 for going around the back with a customer and had only taken US$13 over the entire month.

“I was leaving I pulled out US$5 and gave it to her. When the Aussies saw what I had done, they said if I’d hung around any longer I would be responsible for inflation.”

His cellphone rings again. More crushing part orders. He impressively rattles off someone’s cell phone number from memory and then, with an old fashion touch, jots down something in a little notebook that fits perfectly into his top shirt pocket.

Time is catching up on Mr Quarryman. His wife of 55 years is now in a nursing home and he is spending more time with her and less time on the workshop floor.

“I should be out of it. I have to write down peoples phone numbers. I had to write your number and name down.”

I didn’t tell him the editor of Q&M magazine can’t remember a phone number to save himself, and uses two very detailed diaries to keep his daily working plans in order.

So, when is Keith Niederer finally going to retire?

“Before I’m 90 anyway."