Vesper Marine's technology has been used to form a virtual boundary around America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race courses. Photo / Getty Images
Vesper Marine's technology has been used to form a virtual boundary around America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race courses. Photo / Getty Images
Auckland's Vesper Marine has been bought by NYSE-listed Garmin in a deal that closed in January but flew under the radar during the summer break.
It's the latest in a string of NZ tech companies sold overseas during the pandemic, but Vesper chief product officer Carl Omundsen saysthis deal is "a great New Zealand tech story".
"We're not in a position where there's this big US company that we've put all this blood, sweat and tears into and they're taking it all offshore," he says.
"They're keeping it here in New Zealand, they're keeping people employed. Garmin's heavily investing here, which is great. The VHF communications division for Garmin will be based here in New Zealand and it will be Garmin's only marine-only R&D centre." (Garmin also makes tracking and communications gear for the aviation, automotive and fitness markets.)
Vesper Marine makes marine communications and safety hardware, which it's more recently tied together using cloud-based software.
It was founded in 2007 by Deirdre Schleigh and Jeff Robbins, who had just completed seven years of ocean cruising onboard their yacht Vesper - an experience they say underlined the importance of collision avoidance every day. The couple were joined by electronics designer and fellow sailing buff Omundsen.
Its systems have been used at both the America's Cup and the Volvo Ocean race to put a "virtual fence" around the race course. The Vesper Marine GuardianAIS [Automatic Identification System] was used to make spectators' boats aware of the perimeter, and any real-time updates to the course.
Vesper Marine is the second Auckland-based marine hardware company to be acquired by Garmin.
In 2015, the multinational giant (market cap: US$22.4 billion) bought Fusion Electronics - a maker of marine audio systems - from Navman founder Sir Peter Maire in a deal reported to be worth around $20 million.
Garmin plans to unite Vesper and Fusion under one roof in a newly fitted-out facility. Omundsen says the integration will take around a year. Once it's complete, he anticipates Garmin will add more staff. It's too early to say how many, he says (Vesper employs 22 today).
In the immediate term Omundsen says all Vesper Marine staff have come across to the newly-minted Garmin NZ, bar chief executive Brady Cox, who was recently named the new CEO of web development company Rush Digital - the maker of the Government's NZ Covid Tracer App.
Vesper Marine co-founders Deirdre Schleigh and Jeff Robbins, who decided to found a startup focused on safety and collision avoidance after completing seven-years of ocean cruising. Photo / File
The privately-held Vesper has not released any accounts. And no price was disclosed for the Vesper deal, but it was below the Overseas Investment Office's $100m approval threshold.
Ahead of the deal, Vesper's shareholders included the founders, Artemis Capital founder Anatole Masfen (of the rich-list Mafsen clan), GD1, Icehouse Ventures and Flying Kiwi Angels. The firm also received funding from Crown agency Callaghan Innovation.
How did the deal come about?
"Making marine hardware is a very capital-intensive business," Omundsen told the Herald. "We were in startup mode for some time, and investing heavily in R&D. And we were in a position last year where we were looking to raise capital … and we worked out that or sales channel just wasn't big enough for the ambition we had."
Vesper had great products, Omundsen said, but not always the sales muscle to take on the big marine electronics companies. Being part of a larger organisation would also boost product development. Garmin showed interest in a deal, "And they turned out to be the perfect fit."
"The attraction for Garmin was our IP - the intellectual property that we've built - and the people to continue driving that IP. So it's really important to them and also important to us as founders to make sure people come across. Garmin's been quite impressive in that regard."
