Graham Batts formally ends 60 years of service with 102-year-old Dunedin-based engineering company Scott Technology this year, including as a design engineer, general manager and managing director. With Simon Hartley, Mr Batts looks back on changes over those six decades.
There are "blokes' sheds'' and then there is Graham Batts' workshop at the family home in Dunedin.
Not a huge, sprawling double garage jumbled with ancient lathes and dubious rusted bandsaws, but a precise, meticulously planned and assembled workshop where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.
Mr Batts (78) is retiring after 60 years with listed Dunedin niche engineering company Scott Technology to a 21st-century workshop.
He has an eye for detail and love of all things engineering.
His journey from apprentice to the boardroom reflects all the above.
This reporter was somewhat suspicious of his workshop's cleanliness, but reassuringly there were a couple of boxes of hastily swept up offcuts and rubbish - in their correct place.
Mr Batts might not have realised when joining the Scott team in 1956 that he would be play an increasingly important role in the decades ahead; or just what lengths he would go to secure crucial orders for the company.
Scott would transition over the decades from toolmaking to globally sought-after assembly line manufacturers, its latest phase includes robotics for the meat industry and milking systems for the dairy sector, while another division is manufacturing superconductor technology.
"If you can't reinvent the company every 10 years or so, it could be the end,'' Mr Batts said.
He was born in Gisborne to an Auckland family.
The Batts moved to Dunedin when he was 8 years old.
He completed five years of schooling at Otago Boys' High School in the first half of the 1950s, and credits his childhood inspiration to tinkering in his grandfather's workshop and a later neighbour's workshop, including making his own toys during the war years.
Mr Batts admitted to lack of prowess at OBHS in maths or sports achievement, and there was little money for a university degree in engineering.
Fate intervened with the introduction of the New Zealand Certificate of Engineering, a new polytechnic night course qualification, while apprenticeships at the time in Dunedin "were easy to come by'', Mr Batts said.
At 17, having earlier worked during the holidays for then J&AP Scott, he got an apprenticeship with the company and simultaneously started the new NZCE qualification.
Thanks to prompting from Scott's then technical director Ken Brown, Mr Batts credits a CBI scholarship to Britain to study the emerging technology of fluid power systems, pneumatics and hydraulics as a milestone for himself and Scotts.
After 15 months with two major companies in England, his pneumatics and hydraulics knowledge led to the automation systems Scott still uses today.
Mr Batts believes it was the introduction of fluid power to machine design which made many things possible and more economic than before, and gave Scott its competitive edge.
He described that transition as "from flywheels and cranks to hydraulic cylinders and powerful rams''.
There were at the time numerous companies in Dunedin toolmaking, but it was becoming unprofitable when Dunedin car industry pioneer and businessman Graeme Marsh took an interest in J&AP Scott.
It was the ownership of spark plug distribution rights that were attractive to Mr Marsh, with the 20 or so staff expecting he might close the workshop.
Mr Batts recalls Mr Marsh said: "You just look after the engineering and get it right and I'll look after the money.''
It was not until late 2007 that Mr Marsh stepped down as chairman of Scotts following a marathon stint of 32 years, and in 1995 being awarded a CBE and named Deloittes management executive of the year.
Mr Batts' first five years with Scotts were spent making, then designing, equipment for the production of domestic appliances such as washing machines.
It was that experience which proved useful in later years when Scott Technology designed and built automation for Fisher & Paykel, then eventually for manufacturers around the world.
Mr Batts mentions on several occasions points in time of "quantum leaps'' and "hinge factors'' for Scott; the first being then Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon's era of 1973-78, when Mr Muldoon decided import licences were required for importing machinery.
"Everyone turned to us at that time,'' Mr Batts said.
With a sudden big boost in demand for New Zealand-built machines, Mr Marsh invested in a new Carroll St workshop, while Mr Batts went to the UK to buy new machinery.
All was going well from 1984 to 1987, with big US orders "of $US1million, $2million or $3million'' making the assembly lines for manufacturing appliances, the Kiwi technology far more advanced than outdated US systems.
"Scott was very profitable, with machine building extended to a Christchurch plant, with more space, and rapid growth in exports,'' Mr Batts said.
While Scott listed in 1987, the sharemarket crash that year put paid to progress in the faltering US economy.
"I just needed to get there [US] for orders ... and ended up there for three years, in Texas,'' he said.
He was not without some cheek in seeking work on behalf of Scott Technology.
Scott shareholders heard recently that a 1993 association with Maytag came about through old-fashioned stubbornness on Mr Batts' part.
He decided to visit the company head office at Newton, Iowa, but fronted up with no appointment and not even having a name to ask for.
Unsurprisingly, the receptionist was unhelpful and Mr Batts left empty handed, but the next day he returned, undeterred, and saw visiting Maytag executives milling about waiting for the lift.
On impulse, he got into the lift and out on the sixth floor and bluffed the first person he met into letting him see the chief engineer.
Ultimately, credentials were exchanged, proposals and new projects discussed and those contacts led to some large orders being made.
Scott went on to supply assembly lines to the biggest playmakers of the day, including Kelvinator, Electrolux, Whirlpool, Haier, General Electric and Bosch Siemens.
"We were always in the mix to get a shot at those contracts,'' Mr Batts said.
"If I had one ability, that's to visualise the machine needed to make it easily and quickly,'' Mr Batts said.
That ability served him well when in the US and he would be tendering alongside competitors for work.
While others disappeared for two to three weeks to come up with concept plans, Mr Batts could sit through a weekend with clients and draw up each step of the type of assembly lines and adaptations required.
"If you can't get [product] speed to market, you can be gazumped at the last minute,'' Mr Batts said of the production of assembly lines that followed.
Research and development has been a huge factor of Scott for decades now, and despite branching out into different niche markets in meat robotics and mining, the company was in need of recapitalisation.
The theory behind diversification was should one sector falter, the other markets can offset those declines.
Shareholders recently voted by a large majority to sell a 50.1% controlling stake to the Australian division of global food giant Brazilian food company JBS, which could reap Scott up to $45million in new capital.
Mr Batts feels the meat robotics automation is the latest "quantum leap'' for Scott, saying the joint venture with Silver Fern Farms which started in 2000 "changed everything''.
"Robotic automation is the future. We're in a good situation with Silver Fern Farms working with us in the 50:50 joint venture,'' he said.
Scott managing director Chris Hopkins said Mr Batts had shaped Scott, from the '50s through to where the company was today.
"He leaves an impression so deep that we still get past customers ask about Graham and tell us about their interaction with this amazing person,'' Mr Hopkins said.
He said Scott design philosophies, ingenuity mixed with simplicity, reflected Mr Batts' attitude.
Mr Batts was always thinking about how to do things better, recalling on one occasion finding him walking around the office with both arms outstretched, "making machinery noises''.
When queried, Mr Batts responded he was figuring out the operation and timing of a machine which handled a large flat sheet of steel; imagining how it would be processed into a refrigerator door.
Despite the strong shareholder vote for change, the regulatory approvals are yet to be gained for the JBS buyout.
Mr Batts said: "They [JBS] said to us: ‘We really like your products but you're too small ... something could happen. So we'll become the cornerstone shareholder, give you capital and take all you can deliver.''
JBS is one of the world's largest suppliers of protein and food, and turned over $56billion in the past financial year.
While technically losing control of the company, the JBS offer did give the existing shareholders the chance to opt in or out of the deal.
Mr Batts had several memorable projects over the decades, which ranged from chocolate-making machines to the clock mechanism on Alexandra's hill, still in use today, to an assembly line for Electrolux, which grew into a $6.5million contract.
"I had a few sleepless nights over that. But those were days when people dealt with people and not purchasing departments,'' he said.
Scott chairman Stuart McLauchlan said the company would not be what it was today
"without his vision, design philosophies and technical excellence''.
"When Graeme Marsh asked me to succeed him as chairman, I only put one condition on my acceptance: that Graham Batts commit to stay on until I was happy for him to retire,'' Mr McLauchlan said.
He described Mr Batts also as a "very good director'', especially in his ability to question management and offer an alternate view.
Mr Batts summed up his career with one adage.
"You need two things - good colleagues and good mentors,'' he said.
Mr Batts has myriad retirement projects ahead in his workshop, and has dabbled in building a DNA sampling machine.
Having holidayed recently in Europe, albeit "doing art galleries'' as opposed to industrial archaeology, Mr Batts and his wife are off to Alaska and East Coast US this year.
In Mr Batts' workshop is the chassis of a hydraulic former hospital bed, in the process of being turned into a pneumatic router platform for which, Mr Batts says, drawing up plans is hardly necessary.
