A few years ago, Gareth Evans was walking through Canary Wharf in London’s CBD when he spied a man coming down the side of a building in a Farra cage.
The man, who was about 10 metres away, was oblivious to the Kiwi passer-by’s connection to his unorthodox mode of transport.
While Mr Evans came across it unexpectedly — the machinery pre-dated his tenure at the engineering firm — the feeling of pride, almost a sense of ownership of the building, was palpable.
For 161 years, Farra has been part of Dunedin’s manufacturing landscape, evolving from humble beginnings as tinsmiths to becoming New Zealand’s oldest engineering company, owned by descendants of founders Joseph and Janet Farra.
Its diverse portfolio encompasses design, machining, sheet metal, stainless and heavy fabrication, and powder coating and its capabilities enable it to tackle complex engineering challenges.
Like so many businesses in the South, it quietly beavers away without fanfare or fuss, yet now has a global reach, particularly making a name for itself delivering and exporting access machines and building maintenance units for complex high-rise buildings.
Last week, Mr Evans attended a tall building conference in Bangkok — yes, there really is such a thing — a gathering of architects and builders and those who represent the interests of skyscrapers.
Farra’s name was known among those attending and there was one question on everyone’s lips — “they say, ‘you’re making these things in Dunedin? But you’re one of the top two in the world for niche BMUs (building maintenance units)? How is that done in Dunedin?”
“I ask that question too, but we keep doing it,” Mr Evans said.
For so many businesses and industries in New Zealand, 2024 was a less than memorable year and Farra was not immune to the challenges faced.
Mr Evans described it as “extremely challenging” as both domestic and export markets were impacted by the global economy.
He reckoned conditions now were tougher than during the Global Financial Crisis. But Farra was a business which had endured the Great Depression and two World Wars. “This is just another chapter in that very long journey,” he said.
Conversely, Farra notched up some good wins around project successes and improvements to its systems and processes. The highlight was it being the biggest year for access equipment for about two decades.
The largest BMU it had ever built had been installed in Sydney and Farra would be entering that in a global construction award next year “because we think that’s something we’re pretty proud of”.
There was also acknowledgement for staff members; Katie Gotlieb was named joint runner-up in the Steel Construction New Zealand young achiever of the year award and Max Meffan was highly commended in the SCNZ apprentice of the year.
Developing people was a focus at Farra and it was nice to receive recognition that what they were doing stacked up at a national level. Seeing the new generation of high quality employees coming through ensured the firm’s future was in good hands, he said.
Logistically, Dunedin was a challenging place to be based and traditionally, finding staff had also been very challenging but the flip side that once employees were settled in the city, there was not a lot of mobility. Many of Farra’s 130 staff had been there for more than 30 years and that provided stability.
It was also a good place to do business. There was a lot of co-operation between businesses in the city — “in some places everyone is trying to cut each other’s lunch” — and a supportive environment, he said.
And those in the engineering sector were all proud of being part of it and were conscious of the need to carry on.
“If you look back 30 years, engineering was by far the biggest employer in Dunedin. Now it’s shrunk but it’s still significant. There’s still all of that knowledge and IP and experience tied up in businesses like ours.”
Farra was having discussions about how to change; those that knew of the company, knew it but when it came to local profile — “we’re not good at telling our stories”.
So they were working on that and also setting the record straight on what the sector was really like in the 2020s which had included opening their doors and letting school pupils through to challenge those perceptions.
“People think about engineering and they think about their weird uncle who turns up to the family barbecue with gnarled and broken fingers. It’s not really like that. It’s hi-tech and sophisticated.”
As far as he was concerned, Farra was as much a tech business as it was an engineering or manufacturing firm.
For the first year, there were now women on the tools in every Farra workshop which was a milestone and that had really changed the shop floor culture and made it much more inclusive, he said.
Mr Evans was a driving force behind the establishment of SOREC; the Southland and Otago Regional Engineering Collective. He spearheaded a feasibility study into developing an engineering hub in early 2018.
After many years in hi-tech internationally, he had returned to Dunedin in 2017 and was concerned at the number of engineering firms failing in the region, the lack of capital investment in new technology and the difficulty in finding staff.
On receiving PGF funding, he established a SOREC steering committee which led to the development and launch of SOREC at the end of 2019.
It had been about changing the view of manufacturing and raising the profile of the sector. This year, about 30 secondary school students had placements in engineering companies and several hundred had come through on tours.
He is also on the board of Business South; the governance team there comprised “good people who genuinely want to make a difference” and there was some positive stuff happening in terms of advocacy.
Looking to 2025, Mr Evans expected another tough one, although some signs of improvement were being seen. The challenges being encountered were global — “it’s not a New Zealand problem” — and Farra’s focus would be on efficiencies and continuing to grow the team’s skills.
For Mr Evans, who worked in the United States during the Global Financial Crisis and saw “a lot of tough stuff happening”, it was a challenging time to be running a business.
“You want to keep growing the business and keep improving the business but your main priority becomes doing enough to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods,” he said.
So the focus became on the short-term rather than the longer-term strategy but that responsibility around employees and their families was one that was keenly felt.
Mr Evans — who has been at Farra for seven years — quipped there were two types of leadership; for some people, it was about having people to boss around and, for others, it was having people to look after.
“I think for me and our management team we see all of our staff as someone we have responsibility to as opposed to the other way around. It’s about trying to make sure they are looked after,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Mr Evans said he loved the team he worked with — “a great bunch of people” — and also the satisfaction from seeing physical goods being shipped out at the end of the week.
“The pride in seeing something we’ve made going out into the world . . . makes it all worthwhile. It’s really cool to look at a building and see something we have made,” he said.
Attending the Bangkok conference was all about extending Farra’s networks and getting its name out there and he believed there would be some good opportunities to come out of that.
While Australia and New Zealand were very much slowing down on the construction front as developers pulled back, South East Asia was “absolutely going gangbusters” and there were also good opportunities in Europe.
Reflecting on Farra’s longevity, Mr Evans said the company’s history was something the team was very proud of, although it had little resemblance to its earlier days.
A photograph from 100 years ago show the factory workers all wearing ties, which was the fashion for the time. “Now it’s all high-vis and machines with flashing lights,” he reflected.
Other notable performers
Mons Royale
Wānaka-headquartered Mons Royale has been heroing the wool industry for the past 15 years, creating distinctive high-performance merino apparel. Founded by Hamish and Hannah Acland, it has offices in Innsbruck in Austria, and Squamish, in Canada, and is stocked in more than 1000 retail stores globally.
It has about five retail stores of its own and officially opened a new store in Wānaka this year to mark its anniversary.
Scannable
Scannable, a safety equipment management company also based in Wānaka, raised $5.1 million in seed funding to support its global growth.
The investment allowed Scannable to double its workforce and meet rising demand in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.
The company, founded in 2020, offers a cloud-based platform for managing safety equipment in industries like construction and telecommunications.
Scannable’s product has been adopted by organisations such as Fire and Emergency New Zealand and Davey Tree in the US.
The company has also formed partnerships with safety equipment manufacturers, including French company Beal.
TGC Homes
Dunedin’s TGC Homes was the highest ranked southern business on this year’s Deloitte Fast 50 index — placing eighth with revenue growth of 398%.
The annual index ranked businesses experiencing rapid revenue growth over three years, setting the benchmark for fast growth businesses in New Zealand.
TGC Homes was established in 2016 by Charles Blair, George Hercus and Tom Nailard, who all met through mutual friends.
Their goal was to meet the significant changes in housing needs in the city, driven by changing lifestyles, and what they believed was a need for increased diversity rather than Dunedin’s traditional three-bedroom bungalow.
