Navman coup finds jobs in NZ

By PETER GRIFFIN

A technology exporter that scored a Government research grant last year is giving a bit back with a major US acquisition creating up to 60 new jobs, most of them local.

North Shore-based Navman has bought the global positioning system division of Nasdaq-listed semiconductor maker Conexant, in a move expected to boost Navman's annual revenue from $25 million to about $100 million.

The deal, probably the biggest development in the company's 15-year history, allows it to pick up valuable technology, a handful of blue-chip customers and a distribution network reaching markets worldwide.

Managing director Peter Maire said the purchase would also give "a low-profile company an enormous lift in credibility" in an industry where brand was everything.

He refused to say how much the acquisition had cost Navman, but the company's willingness to continue working with Conexant allowed it to defeat larger bids. "It's not a matter of just writing a cheque: there were other guys prepared to write bigger cheques than we were."

Navman will increase New Zealand-based development and manufacturing to meet greater customer demand, sub-contracting some of the manufacturing work to Christchurch company Dynamic Controls.

A developer of GPS navigation systems for boats, vehicles and handheld computers, Navman - won a $930,000 research grant from Technology New Zealand last August to develop an "in-car" navigation system allowing motorists to negotiate streets and highways with their positions plotted on maps displayed on small screens.

Navman, which recently changed its name from Talon Technologies, hoped to begin selling its car navigation products in six months and had 15 engineers devoted to that part of the business.

"Car navigation is huge in Japan," Maire said. "Probably five million cars have it now. But in Europe there are probably 1.5 million and in the US only several hundred thousand." The biggest growth area for Navman currently was in land navigation - where users attached a GPS card to their handheld computers and let satellites plot their paths.

Navman bought out its US shareholder's stake in the company at the end of last year. Maire said returning the company to local ownership and making a foreign acquisition was in contrast to the usual New Zealand tech story in which a foreign corporate bought up local technology and swiftly moved it overseas.

"We've been able to do things in reverse: dump the manufacturer relationships, take over the brand and distribution strategies ourselves, buy our shares back from the US shareholder - and then buy a US company."

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