Rocking on 40 years later

Rocklabs in Auckland celebrates it’s 40th birthday this year and, despite a downturn in extractive industry production around the world, the company is still busily exporting its range of sample preparation equipment and gold reference materials to over 95 countries.   BY ALAN TITCHALL.

Last year Rocklabs hit the jackpot with an order from the USA for $6 million worth of sample preparation equipment. Unfortunately the deal was postponed late last year in the face of the global crisis when extraction companies across the world put things on hold to ride out the storm.

“Things will come back,” says Rocklabs founder and general manager Dr Ian Devereux. “Minerals and metals are industries with a very long term future. Even a ‘renewable’ energy world needs steel and copper, and there’s no future world scenario that doesn’t have metals in it.”

Devereux has seen many up and downs in this industry, having helped set up Rocklabs in Parnell, Auckland some 40 years ago when he was working for Jim Sprott. As a commercial laboratory it handled a wide range of analytical services, from blood alcohol to water testing.

“Geologist used to turn up occasionally with soil samples to analyse and I suggested to Jim, as a geochemist, that we set up a division to cater for this sector.”

A Kiwi do-it-yourself story

With just Devereux on the payroll to begin with, the fledging division took an inventive approach to acquiring equipment, approaching people they knew in the geology department at Auckland University to ‘inspect’ German made sample preparation machines.

“An engineer that Jim knew was very good at making one-off models. It wasn’t an exact copy but our version was very good.”

The company “grew and shrank” through these early years, recalls Devereux. The mid 1970s was not a rosy time for the extractive industry, but during this time he got the opportunity through an Anzac fellowship from the Australian government to visit similar laboratories in Western Australia.

“It gave me a great view of the production side of the industry as opposed to the exploration side we were dealing with – there weren’t many mines operating in New Zealand at the time.”

In 1975 the pair went their separate ways with Devereux taking equipment and the Rocklabs name and Sprott continuing with the laboratory. The laboratory was later sold by Sprott and continues today as the contractor at the Macraes gold mine.

A few machines had been made for local geologists with demand growing year on year, recalls Devereux. In 1975, the decision was made to manufacture sample preparation equipment on a commercial basis, namely ring and puck mills.

Since the 1980’s the company has specialised in mechanised and automated sample preparation machines that reduce labour costs and improve sample quality.

Global targeting

“Because of the limited size of the domestic market our model right from the beginning was to take the world head on,” he says.

Breaking into the neighbouring Australian market was relatively easy as there was no local competition (as there is now). The Pacific was next, followed by Asia, Canada, the US, South America, Africa and finally Europe.

Devereux says the Kiwi advantage over the traditional sample machine makers (mainly German) was the company’s background in chemistry, while competitors approached their solutions from an engineering perspective.

Rocklabs now sells machines in at least 95 countries and can claim it has equipment in 98 countries as gear is moved around.

“I hope to pass the 100 before I retire,” he adds.

One of the company’s most impressive success stories is Russia. It was someone in the Dairy Board who suggested this market, says Devereux.

“We were put on to a Russian geologist living in Wellington who had worked in the Russian diamond industry. He grabbed the opportunity, visited Russia and soon had an excellent agent, a chemist with a PhD. It is now our most successful agency.”

A bright horizon

Rocklabs was bought out last year by Dunedin-based Scott Technology, a nearly 100-year-old company with a large division in Christchurch that has become a world leader in making production lines for home appliance manufacture.

Devereux was contracted to stay on as manager. His replacement is currently being sought and Devereux hopes to stay on, part time, in a technical capacity.

The company has grown to employ 43 staff and works out of five buildings along Neilson Street in Onehunga, Auckland.

“It was 15 years ago that we arrived in the original building with just six staff and thought we would never grow out of it.”

Since then, the range of product has expanded on the original lab machines, adding rotating sample dividers and more recently, mechanised and automated ‘smart’ machines with a PLC on the front end.

“We only recently added an analytical process to our equipment – X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis – for base metals,” says Devereux.

The team develops ideas and prototypes that are sent out into a working laboratory for 24 hour testing. Other companies around Auckland are contracted to make the parts while the assembly, testing and shipping is done from the Neilson Street site. Apart from electrical motors and tungsten carbide parts, every thing is sourced from within New Zealand. Part of the business is supplying ‘wear parts’ to customers for the Kiwi-made machines.

“A certain amount of metal is always going to be lost with every crush and our parts are not something they can buy off the shelf.”

Devereux looks at Rocklabs as a “good example” of small scale specialised manufacturing in New Zealand.

“I think the country has a great future in specialised manufacturing as long it is prepared to disregard some commonly held misconceptions – such as developing the local market first before proceeding offshore.

“New Zealand is just too small, so when you start out you must think ‘global’, even if you are a one-man band like I was in 1974.”