Page 12 - HW FEB 2021

hard news
A rational approach to OSM
AS REVEALED IN the magazine last year, Hector Egger New Zealand is a new offsite manufacturing (OSM) start-up in Cromwell that began production in January.
Prefabrication/panelisation/OSM may at last be on the cusp of becoming viable here but, with a couple of high-profile OSM failures already noted in New Zealand, what makes this operation a reasonable bet for success?
In short, the fact that it is not aiming too high too soon and that it is literally using plant and process that’s been tried and tested for almost 20 years.
Hector Egger New Zealand is a JV between leading Swiss timber OSM company Hector Egger Holzbau AG and New Zealand partners Stephan Mäusli and Tristan Franklin.
With three ISO 9001 certified factories operating in Switzerland, Hector Egger Holzbau AG has 20+ years’ experience in the offsite manufacturing of timber elements and panels and everything required to mirror this enviable track record has literally been exported to Hector Egger New Zealand’s 3,450m2 factory and offices in Cromwell.
With the NZ partners having been interested in OSM since the Christchurch earthquakes, the time was judged to be right over the last few years to put this interest into action.
Long-time construction professional Stephan had an existing relationship with the Swiss manufacturer from his career in Europe and, with the Swiss operation keen to extend the useful life of some of
its dedicated Hundegger and Weinmann CNC machinery, a partnership was struck to not only export the machinery to New Zealand but also mirror the relatively modest scale and layout of the Swiss factories.
Says Tristan Franklin: “When we first started looking at the business and the opportunities here, we decided very early on the only way that we would ever go into this business was if we closely copied the IP and set-up of our Swiss partners.
“We felt that, given the similarities between our two building codes and the fact there is a lot of timber construction in that part of the world, that [a carbon copy] should work equally well in New Zealand.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re not buying a load of equipment that we have no experience with. We have literally copied to the centimetre that same factory footprint and we are using
the same machines, design software and lean manufacturing methodology that has proven so successful in Switzerland.
“Our partners have three factories and if they were going to open another, they would build the same size factory as we have just completed in Cromwell. Their own experiences have refined this size and layout to ensure the business minimises exposure to inevitable fluctuations in pipeline and maximises the uptime of the factory CNC machinery.
“So that’s why our building is the size it is and that’s why we have two machines set up the way we have – because we think that our risk around pipeline is a lot lower than it potentially would be with a bigger factory.
Even the 450m2, two-level timber office building was manufactured in Switzerland and assembled on-site in Cromwell, in eight days, Tristan is keen to add, by way of
10 NZHJ | FEBRUARY 2021
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