VALLEY OF DEBT
‘Pivot” is the buzzword of our post-Covid response. With the workforce plunging at a pace with GDP, New Zealanders are pivoting – some to new jobs or working from home, others, unfortunately, to benefits. Meanwhile, firms pirouette in search of new core business. And if the country is to emerge from the pandemic in reasonable shape, leading economists warn a lot more pivoting will be needed: from short-term monetary stimulus to economic restructuring and from tourism-dependent service industries into high-tech and value-added products that find a niche in disrupted global supply chains.
It is an area, the late great Sir Paul Callaghan once said, in which New Zealand really thrives, and Auckland-based Helix Flight Manufacturing Machines fits the mould well. The company makes machines and soft ware that produce from metal one of nature’s wonders: the helix. This corkscrew shape, when forged in steel, is integral to all sorts of equipment and machinery, from augers and agitators to conveyors and even marine anchoring systems.
These helices are known as flights, and Helix Flight knows how to make them to a higher standard and in less time than anyone else in the world. Its helices are used around the globe, ranging from robotics factories in Japan to the dams that protect the Netherlands.
Helix Flight started 2020 with a sense of anticipation. “Our customer base was expanding, our global footprint growing,” says founder and managing director Daniel Coats. “Then the pandemic hit, and one by one our prospective
