TL MacLean Ltd marked 100 years in business last month with a function for about 150 customers, friends and staff, past and present.
The company, now based in Dukes Rd North, was founded in 1924 and began as a general engineering and specialist welding company, before moving into transport engineering about 25 years ago under the direction of managing director Barry Armour.
It also manufactured horse ambulances for the New Zealand market and overseas, and introduced Dunedin’s first portable electric welding machine way back in the mid-1920s.
Mr Armour said he began his career at the company as a welder when he was 18.
Transport engineering had always been a “fair chunk” of the company’s operations, with work on trucks and trailers, and he recalled a restoration job on a steam engine when he first started.
The company now built a lot of car transporters.
It had grown and changed quite a lot since he began, with more modern thinking and increased work and job sizes.
The current site was 7000sqm, having expanded from the previous 1000sqm site.
The company was getting “pretty well-known” for manufacturing car transporters in New Zealand and he said breaking into this market had been a notable achievement.
Another one had been container wall piling for Port Otago and work on oil rigs.
Mr Armour said he was “pretty proud” to have seen TL MacLean hit its 100-year milestone.
It was “good honest trading and good staff” that had kept the company in business for so long, he said.
