Eight years ago, the Dunedin computer progammer began experimenting with a popcorn maker at his kitchen table with the idea of making an air coffee roaster.
Knowing he had a good idea, he took it to Startup Dunedin’s Co.starters programme to make sure it could turn into a business.
Since 2019, Mr Hilder has been working out of Dunedin shared office space Petridish designing the roaster, with manufacturing done in Christchurch.
Alongside him, there are two other co-founders, John Robson, who focuses on marketing and is based in Christchurch, and Wayne Burrows who is in charge of customer services and based in Auckland.
With the trio working full time on the business and sales mainly focused in New Zealand and Australia, the business was at a point where it was ready to scale up quickly, Mr Hilder said.
At the start of next month, Kaffelogic will move into a new site in Castle St so all of its manufacturing can be done in Dunedin.
It will be sharing the site with Winely, a Dunedin-founded business which designs software for fermentation analysis for the viticulture sector.
Capital from a new Christchurch-based investor had allowed Kaffelogic to sign the lease of the factory, as well as establish two new positions it was now hiring for, Mr Hilder said.
Having the manufacturing done in Christchurch had been so the founders could work on marketing the product and as well as making enough to meet demand, he said.
‘‘Now we are at a point where we need to scale rapidly and that means we need to be in tighter control of the manufacturing.’’
It had been hoped manufacturing would one day return to Dunedin, but it was always about what was best for business, Mr Hilder said.
Having manufacturing in Dunedin would allow the company to make alterations to the products.
The company’s efforts to source parts for its machines had been affected by global shipping delays.
‘‘It has caused us some grief because we were unable to get some key components to the machines.
‘‘It may get worse next year but it is hard to know at this stage.’’
In the first six months Kaffelogic was in its new premise, Mr Hilder was expecting to make about 20 machines a month, and to double that to 40 in the second six months.
Next year, the company was going to start exporting its product to the United States.
It already had customers lined up, and it was anticipated Kaffelogic could face ‘‘quite massive demand’’.
The company was also looking at customers in other countries such as England, South Africa, Thailand and some in Europe.
Last month, Kaffelogic’s machine was used by the winner at World Barista Championship in Milan, which was a significant endorsement for the product, Mr Hilder said.
‘‘That was like a coming of age for us and has attracted a lot of interest for us,’’ he said.
