No escape button for troubled keyboard company

The New Zealand-designed Lomak keyboard allows people with disabilities to use a computer. Photo / Dean Purcell

A company selling New Zealand-designed keyboards for the disabled, backed by Trade Me founder Sam Morgan, has gone into liquidation.

Opdo marketed and distributed the Lomak (light operated mouse and keyboard), which is operated by a head-mounted or hand-operated laser and allows people with disabilities to type and navigate the internet.

Sam Morgan's investment vehicle Jasmine Investment Holdings has a one-third stake in the company.

Liquidators Meltzer Mason Heath said Opdo ran out of working capital during 2008 and efforts to attract new investors or a purchaser were not successful.

Opdo chief executive Chris Mulcare said Morgan had "made a decision to not continue to invest in the company".

The Lomak was invented and designed by Kiwis Mike Watling and Peter Haythornthwaite. In 2007 it won an award at the International Design Excellence Awards, and has been exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

However, the market for assistive technology was challenging, Mulcare said. "A lot of the people who need this technology are depending on philanthropic and government funding.

"We are looking for investment offshore, particularly in the American market which is a much larger market for this sort of technology, and we're still exploring those avenues."

Opdo was working with the liquidators, he said. Paying its creditors was important, but so was finding a way forward so the technology could get to people who needed it.

He said the credit crunch hadn't helped but the company was struggling before that.

The liquidators estimate Opdo owes preferential and unsecured creditors $150,000. It was not yet known what its intellectual property was worth.

Jasmine Investment Holdings invests in a number of technology companies, including accounting software firm Xero and film software startup Ebus.