December 2009 (pdf) - Port Nelson

Port Nelson Limited report. December 2009. Page 10
connections
A company we RELY on
“The fundamentals at Reliance are very good with a strong team-based culture that is a credit to the effort
put in over the years from guys like our Works Manager Kim Harris,” Andrew Gray, General Manager says.
“We are a very traditional family-type engineering business with a number of loyal and long standing
customer relationships, good skills and quality, and strong business ethics.”
Reliance Engineering’s connection with Port Nelson Limited goes back
many years. Right now, under a new ‘helmsman’, Reliance is looking to
build on the strong relationship between the two companies as it
begins to unfold some meaty growth plans for the future.
Andrew Gray and Kim Harris with the
new mud slicer, under construction in
the Reliance workshop.
The business was acquired last year by the Challenge New Zealand
Group, which has three other port based companies under its
umbrella: Fluid Power Solutions, Challenge Marine, and McBride
Design. The four businesses work independently in various sectors
of engineering (land based, marine, hydraulics and design), each with
its own management team responsible for the strategic direction of
their business unit.
Andrew Gray was appointed as General Manager for Reliance earlier
this year. He has lived in Nelson for five years, contracting to the Pike
River Coal scheme on the West Coast for the past three years.
Andrew says he came into a company where the existing management
team had created a sound platform, and the last six months have
seen a lot of intensive planning and work on strategies for growing
the business over the next 10 to 15 years.
The North Cardinal
Beakon was fabricated for
Port Nelson by Reliance
Engineering in 2006.
Andrew rates the port company as an ‘A-Class’ client, and says
Reliance staff work closely with the port infrastructure team and
have developed a high level of trust. There are not many weeks
where Reliance has not got a project on the go for Port Nelson – they
recently constructed a mud slicer that will be suspended under the
tug Huria Matenga to take pinnacles of material off the sea floor in
the shipping channels. (Read more in Port Progress on page 5.)
The future looks bright for Reliance: “We are very excited about the
next few years, this year we are working hard on priming the business
for the future, bedding down our plan and aligning that with Group
objectives,” Andrew says. “We are making sure our management
systems are robust, and building on our capacity and capabilities.”
Andrew says the strong relationship with Port Nelson will be
increasingly important in the future, as the port is a critical part of the
company’s growth plan to attract new engineering opportunities to
the region and access potential markets throughout New Zealand
and overseas.