Escea Fireplace Company, based in Green Island, has unveiled a new line of "holographic" electric fireplaces retailing for around $7000.
The Escea LE800, LE1000 and LFS800 employ "Pepper’s Ghost" — a technique developed in the 19th century to create the illusion of an image floating in front of an object.
The technique had a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s, when it was used to make deceased artists such as Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley appear onstage.
It is also used in the museum exhibit industry.
"We’re certainly combining some cutting-edge digital technology with an established, older way of making holographic imagery," chief executive Nigel Bamford said.
There was a growing market for electric fireplaces in Australia and New Zealand, but up until now, they had lacked the "realism" of a traditional wood burner or gas heater, he said.
The technology projected a video file on to a holographic reflector — a plane of specially coated glass angled at 45 degrees — to make it appear as though there were real flames flickering inside the fireplace.
Glowing LED lights and logs of faux wood placed behind the reflector also helped to create the illusion of a crackling flame.
"So, far more realistic than just simply having a TV screen playing an image of a fireplace.
"If you walk into a room and one of these things is burning, unless you went and put your head right beside it, you wouldn’t actually know that it’s not a real fireplace," he said.
The company’s models were the most realistic on the market at present, and to the best of its knowledge, were the first electric fireplaces — holographic or not — to be manufactured in the southern hemisphere, Mr Bamford said.
Its team of engineers had spent more than three years developing the models, which included creating their own circuit board, writing their own software and inventing their own methodology for recording flame imagery.
"It’s been one of the most complicated and challenging engineering projects that we’ve ever taken on."
About 95% of all electric fireplaces in the world were produced in Asia, and Escea was "bucking the trend" by choosing to design and manufacture this genre of fireplace in Dunedin.
Electric fireplaces were a more environmentally friendly option, at least in a place like New Zealand which used renewable energy, he said.
They also gave people the chance to install a fireplace in spaces that were otherwise not able to house one, due to smoke regulations or lack of a flue pipe or gas supply.
While they were never going to have the "heating horsepower" that a gas or wood burner did, electric fireplaces were becoming a more appealing option for modern homes and new constructions with multiple heat sources.
They were a small but growing option that Escea could one day see becoming a "significant part of [its] future manufacturing".
Future models might even include a speaker system to simulate the crackling sound of wood burning, he said.
