The Executive Club: Market crash spurs hi-tech path

By David Porter

Bay of Plenty Times·

19 Dec, 2014 01:22 AM8 mins to read

"I was interested in looking at where populations were headed and what products they would buy, says Warwick Downing.

Warwick Downing was a carpenter working on building projects throughout the central and lower North Island when the 1987 stockmarket crash forced him on to a totally new career path.

He now runs one of New Zealand's most hi-tech operations, researching into and commercialising titanium powder 3D printing manufacturing technology.

Brought up in Wanganui, where he attended tech-focused Wanganui Boys College, Mr Downing left high school to become a tradesman carpenter, working for a building firm.

"But after the market crash, we went from having so much work we didn't know what to do with ourselves, to having none at all," he said.

By then in his early 20s, he relocated to Hamilton and completed a Bachelor of Social Sciences with a focus on demography, marketing and communications, at Waikato University.

"I was interested in looking at where populations were headed and what products they would buy in the future," he said.

After graduation he went to work for Health Waikato for the next three years, focusing mostly on health promotion. He got his first taste of exporting when a friend tapped him to move to Wellington and run two horticultural companies, Blackcurrents NZ and NZ Stonefruit Exports.

"I finished up running all aspects of them, including the research and development, the international marketing, and co-ordinating the exports," he said. After almost four years, he accepted an offer to join what was then TradeNZ, now NZ Trade and Enterprise (NZTE).

Following a three-year stint with NZTE in Wellington, he accepted an offer in 2000 to take up the position of Trade Commissioner in Fiji. But just two months before he and wife Anne arrived to take up residence in the capital Nadi, civilian George Speight mounted a coup against the newly elected government led by Fiji's first Indian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry. The move triggered several years of unrest and army rule.

"We turned up not long after the Speight coup," he said. "Looting had taken place, the shops still had boards over the windows and there was very little to buy. Our view was that it could only get better."

Despite enduring regular roadside checks at gunpoint and a restricted life for a while, the couple were able to live "as normal a life as you can under a huge amount of armed tension". Just before his three-year term was up, Mr Downing was asked to extend for a further two years.

He agreed, with one caveat - that if a job ever came up with NZTE in Tauranga he could be released from the Fiji contract to take it. His wife came from Tauranga, the couple spent their holidays in the Bay of Plenty, and were keen to re-base there.

Two weeks into the new contract, Jody Tipping resigned from NZTE Tauranga to co-found IT services company Cucumber, and Mr Downing was appointed as a client manager in her place. However, he wasn't allowed to leave Fiji for another eight months because the government needed him to stay on to co-ordinate a major Pacific ministerial trade mission.

In 2004, the family relocated to Tauranga and Mr Downing began to focus on NZTE's engineering sector clients, which is when he first got to know Iain Macrae, who heads one of Tauranga's biggest engineering companies, Page Macrae.

"I'd always had an interest in technology and Iain was really starting to get into advanced technologies and he got me to look into them," said Mr Downing.

Page Macrae adviser Dr Peter Franz, a nuclear physicist from the former East Germany, began to educate Mr Downing on powdered metallurgy manufacturing applications. Eventually Mr Downing was seconded from NZTE to begin setting up what became the Titanium Industry Development Association (TiDA), which was formally created in 2009 after a lot of preparatory work. Mr Macrae provided crucial funding and support also came from NZTE. Since then, TiDA has also developed a close relationship with crown research organisation Callaghan Innovation and other institutions researching into the technologies.

"Warwick saw an opportunity to move into that area and drive the set-up of TiDA and it's just going from strength to strength," said Jon Mayson, who chairs the industry panel which is supervising national research into these new technologies to ensure they are commercially grounded.

TiDA has been recognised worldwide for doing leading-edge work with its Selective Laser Melting 3D printers, which make state-of-the-art 3D objects using additive printing of metal powders, such as titanium alloys. TiDA, which also has a commercial arm, Rapid Advanced Manufacturing (RAM), has two of the hi-tech printers at its base on the Windermere Bay of Plenty Polytechnic campus.

Mr Downing said 75 per cent of the operation's output was now commercial production as opposed to prototyping. The company produces firearm suppressors for Oceania Defence, has now ramped up production of its Team NZ titanium boat knives, and produces a range of orthopaedic tools, among other products.

However, despite the technical nature of the work, Mr Downing said he had done most of his learning on the job, backed up by extensive reading of the scientific literature.

"It's still a very young technology and there's so much to learn," he said.

Mr Downing paid particular credit to Dr Franz, who serves as TiDA's science director, and continues to advise Page Macrae. He also noted the role of Mr Mayson, who originally supported the setting up of TiDA while he was chair of NZTE. Beppie Holm, business development adviser at the BOP Polytechnic, has also been a key adviser. She is co-ordinating TiDA's involvement as a partner in WNT Ventures, which earlier this year was awarded one of only three new government-backed technology incubator slots.

"With these sort of people, you can go to them with a question and they will give you guidance," said Mr Downing.

Bert Wilson, who runs Oceania Defence, which manufactures its titanium handgun suppressors at TiDA/RAM, said Mr Downing worked well in helping people develop their commercial applications with the 3D technology.

"Warwick is an outstanding individual in every respect," said Mr Wilson. "The technology itself is good and it's a very big benefit to the community."

TiDA drops Inc in new direction

This week the Titanium Industry Development Association, Inc was formally restructured as TiDA Ltd.

"We are starting to grow quite quickly and are expecting much faster growth next year," said chief executive Warwick Downing.

To better meet the changing levels of activity, TiDA would no longer be an incorporated society and industry association, he said. The operation currently has five full-time equivalent staff working in its Windermere campus headquarters.

TiDA in turn owns approximately 47 per cent of its commercial sister company Rapid Advanced Manufacturing (RAM), with the balance held primarily by Ian Macrae of Page Macrae, together with other shareholders including Beppie Holm and Mr Downing.

"TiDA is really focused on the R&D and developing the technologies, while RAM is responsible for commercialising the research," said Mr Downing, adding that the work being done at its Windermere base was world-leading.

Jon Mayson, chairman of the the titanium technology's industry advisory panel, said: "Warwick's been incredibly successful in turning TiDA into what it is today, from a position where it was existing only on a government grant, to a position where it's self-sustaining."

Mr Downing said TiDA reached an agreement with the South Australian government last month to help develop the state's titanium powder 3D technology. TiDA was also talking with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's national science body, about how CSIRO could replicate the New Zealand model, he said. "There are 3D metals printers in Australia, but ours are operated on a much more commercial basis. That's why they like what we are doing."

Busy times mean being stuck on land

Warwick Downing found he had so little time left after work and family weekend activities that this month he sold his boat.

"I used to love to take my boat out fishing, but it didn't touch the water for 18 months, and I think twice in the six months before that," he said.

"So I sold it, and watched it driven away with a great deal of sorrow."

Mr Downing is married to Anne Hay, who he met at university and who returns to full-time teaching at Bethlehem Primary School next year.

He is a long-time member of the board of trustees for Otumoetai Intermediate School, where Jack, 13, has just finished studying, and Meg, 10, is about to start.

"I'm really lucky because I enjoy my work and genuinely find it interesting," he said.

"But when I'm not working I like to spend time with my family, which you can never do enough of."