Datacom enters Chinese market

Datacom is part-owned by New Zealand Post with more than 4000 staff in Australasia and Asia. Photo / Janna Dixon

China offers a lot of potential for New Zealand-based technology services provider Datacom, says its boss.

Group chief executive Jonathan Ladd says the company entered the Chinese market in April, providing technical support services in Mandarin for a United States-based multi-national firm, which he was unable to name.

Datacom already provided services for that customer in other languages from Malaysia, but found it could more effectively obtain Mandarin-speaking support staff through setting up shop in China.

Datacom, part-owned by New Zealand Post with more than 4000 staff in Australasia and Asia, reported a 9 per cent increase in revenue to $788 million for the year to March 31.

Profit after tax of $25 million was 13.6 per cent up on the prior year, the company said. New Zealand revenue rose 8.3 per cent to $375 million.

Greg Davidson, Datacom's New Zealand chief executive, said transtasman services were another growth area.

"There are a large number of quite sizeable organisations that operate both in New Zealand and Australia and a small number of providers capable of giving quality IT management and software development to both locations," Davidson said.

Datacom said a significant development for the firm had been the signing of a lead agency agreement, for an initial term of 10 years, to supply services to multiple New Zealand government agencies.

"Securing the Government contract in part fuelled a Datacom Group decision to further expand current data centre facilities and build new cloud infrastructure capabilities in New Zealand and Australia," the company said.