"Diesel is very expensive and they could use wood, but with the size of Fonterra's boilers they would literally chew up South Island forests in just a few years," he said.
His father Bruce once owned the firm with Paul Dippie. The pair bought it in 1984 from Bryce Easton, son of Bill Easton, who founded the company in 1953.
Bruce McBeth and Paul Dippie changed its name to Easteel and subcontracted to make Babcock & Wilcox boilers, a United States firm that provides solutions for fossil, renewable and nuclear fuels worldwide.
"They saw a potential in the business of boilers and the licence from Babcock and Wilcox for Australia and New Zealand," Hamish McBeth said.
"So they flew up to Singapore, met with the guys from the United States, paid a whole heap of money and signed a licence agreement.
"That allowed Easteel to design and build under licence, using all of the Babcock and Wilcox design software and technology."
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the company built boilers throughout the country for forestry and dairy companies.
It bought an Australian company and steadily grew, coming to the attention of Australian giant RCR Tomlinson.
In 2005 "it made them an offer they couldn't refuse".
"With RCR's bigger balance sheet came an appetite to take on bigger or larger projects - expand our horizons a bit more."
Bruce McBeth said worldwide sales were the goal when buying international technology licences but it was unable to take on the risk of very large international contracts.
"Small companies should do small things and big companies should do big things," he said.
"RCR are able to take it forward with strong resources, to expand what we started.
"You get to a stage in life where it is not worth putting everything on the line to win a job."
RCR Engineering Ltd merged with Centurion Industries to create RCR Tomlinson, a leading multi-disciplinary engineering firms and ASX-listed.
Now named RCR Energy, the RCR Hawke's Bay branch won a contract, through its Australian company, from Nestle to build a boiler in Queensland's Gympie.
It used spent coffee grounds for fuel left over from instant-coffee production, generating steam at up to 24 tonnes per hour, utilising Bubbling Fluid Bed technology, where fuel is poured on to a bed of aerated sand.
The plant was designed in RCR's Hastings office (now in Napier), manufactured in Dannevirke and a Hawke's Bay team installed and commissioned it.
With a glowing reference, general manager David McGregor and sales manager Philip Gedye travelled to Switzerland looking for more work, winning a contract to build another boiler in Chile.
After Chile came Mexico, where RCR built one of the largest coffee-waste fired boilers in the world.
Next came a commission in England, the home of boilers.
The previous two commissions had their main boilers made overseas and the balance of plant in Dannevirke, but the smaller English boiler - weighing 62 tonnes - made it viable for the entire project to be built at RCR's workshop in the town.
"Price is obviously a major factor but probably the key difference from our competitors, particularly our Indian competitor, is shipping the components in as big a piece as possible," Hamish McBeth said.
"You really have to push that point, because the bottom-line price is generally more expensive than our competitors, but the guys who receive it understand the cost of doing that work on site is a whole lot more. The other aspect is safety. If you are on-site a lot longer, your exposure to accidents is higher."
Between each Nestle commission is a trip to its lakeside headquarters in Switzerland to avoid "slipping off the radar".
"Nestle are committed to building strong relationships with their suppliers and, over the last few years, we have managed to become one of the preferred suppliers for coffee boiler technology.
"It took a long time to build this trust. We visit them as often as we can. Philip is going there in October and I was there in May." While his father spent his working life at the company, Hamish has worked for two others. After graduating as a mechanical engineer, he first worked in Tauranga before joining the family firm in 2002.
He left, following his bride-to-be to Germany. They met in Napier while she was travelling.
He learned the language and became a sales engineer for a similar firm to RCR Energy.
The German reputation for engineering made it "very easy" to be a salesperson.
Back in New Zealand, David McGregor had moved on and RCR bought the Norfolk group of companies, with Philip Gedye RCR's New Zealand manager in Auckland.
He asked Hamish to return to Hawke's Bay, which he did last year, but last month returned to Germany for his wedding.
His nuptials meant he missed the ExportNZ's ASB Exporter of the Year Awards, where RCR won the Napier Port Most Compelling Strategy in Export Award.
His father takes a keen interest in the business. He returned from the wedding trip on Thursday and was at the Dannevirke plant when he spoke with Hawke's Bay Today.
Bruce McBeth started as a 16-year-old apprentice, biking to work to build top-dressing loaders, and ended up chairman of the board.
"There is a wonderful staff here - a lot of them served with me and it is always nice to catch up with them," he said.
Despite the parent company's deep pockets, the pressure is on for RCR Energy due to declines in log and dairy prices, making big-ticket capital expenditure less likely in the short term.
Mr McBeth said diversity was important to smooth the peaks and troughs of big projects, which could take up to five years from tendering to commissioning.
Most customers are in New Zealand and Australia, but it has several international clients and products, all relying on Dannevirke's engineering excellence.
"We are pushing harder and harder with these international guys. Nestle operates in most countries and in each one there are multiple sites - it is huge. They are in most countries in the world, so our location here in New Zealand becomes less of an influence."
He said New Zealand's free trade agreement with China made him more optimistic of more work there, but a close alliance was necessary for many countries.
"It is very, very difficult for us to go into India and try and sell something on our own. Trying to find the right person to talk to and competing with local suppliers is extremely difficult.
"Entering new markets alongside an existing client such as Nestle makes the road a whole lot easier."
