A good seat at the Olympics for Auckland firm

By ELLEN READ

A North Shore company set up by two men in a garage in the 1980s will have a big presence at the Olympic Games in Athens next month.

RPM International Tool and Die, which now employs 50 people in a purpose built engineering workshop, made the mould for the plastic seats at Games venues.

Managing director Peter Smith said the company was approached by an Australian company 2 1/2 years ago after it worked on the seats at the North Shore Stadium.

The mould, the contract for which was worth a "couple of hundred thousand dollars" to RPM, was sent to Athens 18 months ago and has been busy pumping out seats since.

RPM makes dies for plastic moulding that include flip tops for shampoo bottles and moulds for metal stamping - anything from ironing boards to paper plates.

The company is also working with Oracle on the next America's Cup Challenge. It helped One World during the last Auckland campaign.

Local customers include Fisher & Paykel Appliances and Tait Electronics in Christchurch.

RPM's latest coup involved making tool presses for the casting of chassis parts for the legendary US muscle car, the Corvette.

Smith said that deal came about as a result of cold-calling in the US when he and business partner Mark Vincent visited last year.

Also in the company's sights is bidding for work on the new Boeing 7E7 aircraft.

Australian company Hawker de Haviland, now owned by Boeing, will manufacture the struts, stabilisers and other wing components and RPM is hoping to get in on the action.

* A second New Zealand business connection to Athens is coming in the form of the Olympic torch.

Southland timber company Lindsay and Dixon has supplied the New Zealand native hardwood maple beech for the production of all 12,000 Olympic torches.

The maple beech was harvested from the company's forests.