A small, inconspicuous building on Miranda Street is home to an award winning business with an international customer base.
"And we are one of the larger employers in the town," says John Coplestone, who along with Diane Coplestone, owns Industrial Chemistry Services.
The appeal of them is that within one hour of being installed on a site, you have clean drinking water.
Inside the building is a high-tech IANZ accredited laboratory for water and wastewater analysis as well as a development laboratory for specialised water treatment applications.
On another site in Stratford, the business, which also trades as Karina Water, houses several containers. Open them up, and you find they house entire water treatment plants inside. These are built to the highest of specifications, meeting Australia and New Zealand drinking water standards.
These drinking water treatment plants are built entirely inside 6m transport containers. This, says John, enables easy transport by ship, truck, helicopter or pretty much any other transport motorised transport form you can imagine.
"We send them out overseas as well as nationally. Currently we have them in Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Australia for example."
Some plants are sold directly to the customer, while others are leased out says John.
If leased, then we maintain them for the client so they aren't just getting a plant, but they are getting our expertise as well.
The success of the business is in part due to the fact they stay specialised while still offering a range of services.
"It's all to do with the same core business, but we do everything from building the actual water treatment plant which is for sale or hire, to manufacturing a range of water treatment chemicals, supplying high specification water treatment equipment and providing a testing service for water samples." The company also builds ion exchange plants to produce high purity water for industrial applications.
For the past 18 years, the company has been operating out of Stratford and John says they have no plans to move.
Stratford is the perfect location for our company. We are nice and central here, plenty of space, less traffic than New Plymouth and we are surrounded by big businesses such as petrochemicals, who use our products and services.
The company is enjoying great success in Papua New Guinea, says John.
"With PNG, it is all word of mouth, so once we had one satisfied client there, the calls started coming in. Now we have plenty of business coming from there and it just keeps growing." John heads to PNG at least once a year, building business relationships and visiting sites.
An example of the Portable Water Treatment Plants built and installed by the company.
With the business doing well, John says he wasn't too surprised to come away from this year's TSB Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards, but was pleased to see their work recognised.
"We have entered and won the awards a few times in the past, but then had a break. Coming back into them this year it was great to get the feedback that we are continuing to excel in our business and stand among the best in Taranaki."
At last month's awards, Industrial Chemistry Services received a Commended award in the Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship Excellence Award (sponsored by Massey University), a Commended award in the IT and Technology Excellence Award (sponsored by Naki Cloud) and was the overall Winner of the Primary Industries, Trades, Manufacturing and Engineering Industry Excellence Award (sponsored by ETL).
Find out more about what the business does: www.karinawater.com or www.icsnz.co.nz
